FreeDOS - the drop-in, open source replacement for MS-DOS - was started after Microsoft announced that starting from Windows 95, DOS would play a background role at best for users. Almost two decades later, FreeDOS has survived and, as its creator explains in the interview, is still being actively developed, despite achieving its initial aim of an MS-DOS compatible OS, which quite frankly is somewhat amazing.
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2011-05-12
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Next time I'll try it on a real PC.
Quite possibly. The DOSCore website actually mentions that they've had a lot of reports of problems under VMs and that, following their most recent set of updates, Microsoft VirtualPC is still the only VM that they test with often enough to work as intended out of the box.
Apparently there are problems with VirtualBox unless you change the emulated chipset to ICH9... which currently leaves DOSCore with no networking support.
Edited 2013-02-08 01:31 UTC
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FreeDOS is an interesting beast in that, like Linux in embedded devices, it's a lot more popular than many
people realize.
I think every bootable disk or disk image I've ever received from a motherboard manufacturer has been running FreeDOS for things like its BIOS flasher EXEs.
(And, of course, it's also a useful source of utilities if you want to pimp out your DOSBox setup)
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Doscore is actually at the point where it is very usable as a Desktop. Installed ontop of Freedos or eDrDOS (for that lovely USB support) It is great for me, small speedy and cost almost nothing.
Finding suitable hardware can be tricky nowadays though.
I would not use it as my standard desktop, but as it is fully compatible with the old PLC devices i program i boot into it now and then since regular DOS has no multitasking what so ever whilst doscore has pseudo multitasking.
The reason i mention it is that whilst OS/2 is better at virtually everything DOS has some benefits.
Member since:2012-03-31
I like the work DOSCore is doing. Also following another 'distro' that has opted, instead, to use 4dos as its' command processor - LightDOS.
It's nice to see continued development in this area by both FreeDOS and 3rd-parties working on some fun solutions. Good interview by Jim Hall in that he continues to see the project moving forward - beyond fulfilling the original goals of DOS compatibility.