OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/26762/DOS_is_long_dead_long_live_FreeDOS Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Sat, 18 May 2013 09:03:58 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Comment by MOS6510 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551612 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551612 Maybe I should give it another go, because the last time I tried it it crashed on the first DOS program I tried and I also encountered a number of bugs with FreeDOS itself. Wed, 06 Feb 2013 12:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (MOS6510) Comments Comment by ssokolow http://www.osnews.com/thread?551620 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551620 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) Wed, 06 Feb 2013 13:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ssokolow) Comments Used it http://www.osnews.com/thread?551623 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551623 Used it a few times, mostly in VMs and just to recover old stuff or play old DOS-based games. Works well enough. Hadn't got used to the extensions, though, as I hadn't needed them [yet]. Wed, 06 Feb 2013 13:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Drunkula) Comments RE: Comment by ssokolow http://www.osnews.com/thread?551631 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551631 Because it's barely an OS, but in a good way. Wed, 06 Feb 2013 13:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JAlexoid) Comments RE[2]: Comment by ssokolow http://www.osnews.com/thread?551634 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551634 Oh come on now....that's like saying Linux without X, Gnome or KDE running on top of it makes it "barely" an OS. FreeDOS is worlds ahead of the old MS-DOS we remember. There's nothing stopping anyone from running a decent GUI on top of FreeDOS. Wed, 06 Feb 2013 13:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ferrels) Comments RE[3]: Comment by ssokolow http://www.osnews.com/thread?551642 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551642 I expect people on OSNews to know the basic functionality of modern OS'es and features available in Linux kernel(even without the init daemon) Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JAlexoid) Comments DOSCore http://www.osnews.com/thread?551710 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551710 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. Wed, 06 Feb 2013 19:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (judgen) Comments RE: DOSCore http://www.osnews.com/thread?551782 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551782 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. Thu, 07 Feb 2013 10:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (PaxD75) Comments RE[4]: Comment by ssokolow http://www.osnews.com/thread?551814 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551814 An OS on its own is of little value. We need it to run the programs on the computer - and for such purpose "barely an OS" seems to be quite enough. Thu, 07 Feb 2013 18:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Zbigniew) Comments RE: Comment by MOS6510 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551816 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551816 Really? When did you last try it. I had our custom embedded system working on it ten years ago, working better on free dos than it did on the commercial dos clone it was written for. (I never convinced management to switch, though) Thu, 07 Feb 2013 18:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bill Shooter of Bul) Comments RE[2]: Comment by MOS6510 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551821 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551821 It may have been last year or the year before, but I'm pretty sure it was version 1.x. I installed it in VirtualBox. Maybe it doesn't behave well in there.

Next time I'll try it on a real PC. Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (MOS6510) Comments RE[3]: Comment by MOS6510 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551843 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551843
It may have been last year or the year before, but I'm pretty sure it was version 1.x. I installed it in VirtualBox. Maybe it doesn't behave well in there.

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 Fri, 08 Feb 2013 01:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ssokolow) Comments RE[3]: Comment by MOS6510 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551929 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551929 Or it could just be a modern pc hardware issue. I mean we were using pentium I class processors running at 150-230 mhz. Stuff that was designed to run dos/windows 95. Fri, 08 Feb 2013 16:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bill Shooter of Bul) Comments RE[4]: Comment by MOS6510 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551936 http://www.osnews.com/thread?551936 ssokolow mentioned FreeDOS does have issues running on virtual hardware. If your stuff runs fine I guess it's safe to assume FreeDOS works pretty fine on real hardware.

Next time I'll use a real PC. Fri, 08 Feb 2013 17:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (MOS6510) Comments