SvarDOS is an open-source project that is meant to integrate the best out of the currently available DOS tools, drivers and games. DOS development has been abandoned by commercial players a long time ago, mostly during early nineties. Nowadays it survives solely through the efforts of hobbyists and retro-enthusiasts, but this is a highly sparse and unorganized ecosystem. SvarDOS aims to collect available DOS software and make it easy to find and install applications using a network-enabled package manager (like apt-get, but for DOS and able to run on a 8086 PC).
↫ SvarDOS website
SvarDOS is built around a fork of the Enhanced DR-DOS kernel, which is available in a dedicated GitHub repository. The project’s base installation is extremely minimal, containing only the kernel, a command interpreter, and some basic system administration tools, and this basic installation is compatible down to the 8086. You are then free to add whatever packages you want, either from local storage or from the online repository using the included package manager. SvarDOS is a rolling release, and you can use the package manager to keep it updated.
Aside from a set of regular installation images for a variety of floppy sizes, there’s also a dedicated “talking” build that uses the PROVOX screen reader and Braille ‘n Speak synthesizer at the COM1 port. It’s rare for a smaller project like this to have the resources to dedicate to accessibility, so this is a rather pleasant surprise.
We probably need this simplicity… on a somewhat modern system.
That has always been the issue. The 8086 is insufficient to do most modern work. And even though DOS technically supports protected mode 32-bit programs (DPMI, from open source CWSDPMI, or Windows’s internal one for DOS windows for example)…. And FreeDOS had a 32-bit fork…
Yet the driver and API situation makes it fragmented.
Do you want to run networking? Yes you can. There is even TCP/IP. But every “stack” is independent of each other
Do you want to make some noise? Maybe play something on your sound blaster in the background? There is a TSR for that. But it has to hook into internal data structures like an octopus to handle your multimedia keyboard. And it will break your DOOM session.
We don’t have to go too far, but a functional, simple, full screen, mostly text system would be awesome.
Maybe one day someone will make a “Raspberry PI” DOS or ESP-32 one.
A combination of text mode editors -> compilers -> occasional DOOM -> Norton Commander (okay Midnight Commander) -> being able to SSH to my other computers
Would be awesome
[ I realized I said nothing about DR-DOS… Sorry for being a bit off-topic ]
OS/2 is also alive and well for retro gaming because you can use the upper memory in a DOS session which makes some DOS games run much better!