I find the rumours of DF being difficult to get up and running a little bit weird. It ran fine in DOSBox the first time I tried it (around DOSBox 0.6 or so I think). I just followed the instructions someone had posted here. DOSBox has improved since then and DF runs pretty much perfectly for me. This seems to be the same for almost everyone. Unless you have a very old PC.
When I first bought DF back in early 1997, the game was completely broken. It almost constantly crashed, and on top of that were all the other gameplay bugs. With the game patched, and DOSBox, and all the installation and tweaking guides available online I think you'll be able to play it fairly easily.
But try the demo first