In this installment: some strange things I discovered when purchasing a FreeDOS laptop from Hewlett Packard. I suspect that the audience for this will be somewhat limited but I had fun exploring this. Perhaps you, dear reader, will find a chuckle in here too.
Some background: I recently purchased a HP ZBook 17.8 G8 as I run Fedora Linux I decided to have a little fun with the OS selection and picked the FreeDOS option (Other options include Ubuntu, and various flavors of Windows 11).
I can guarantee you this will be a lot weirder than you think.
Well, it’s even weirder than that.
I kept being surprised! If you watched the video you will notice the boot menu resizing.
That’s the xdotool after the sleep.
It’s like they set out with the single goal of making it as overly complicated as possible with as little benefit as possible…and if this is the case…KUDOS.
Why? I’d say it makes perfect sense. they know anybody buying a barebones workstation already has a company approved OS they are gonna deploy OOTB like Red Hat or Win 10 LTSB so nobody is gonna use the FreeDOS it comes with, they have to have an OS installed for contractual reasons and I seriously doubt FreeDOS is gonna keep up with the myriad of hardware HP uses so just stick it in a Linux VM which rarely needs updating so less work for an OS that isn’t gonna be used anyway.
Certainly a lot less work than keeping it updated and really no point in that much effort for an OS that is gonna be nuked in seconds after the unit is switched on.
A single instance of FreeDOS would make sense, but a convoluted set of 2…not so much to me. Plus, the whole Debian with Qemu….is massive overkill. A very simple Debian boot instance is all you need.
Nope, the thing is, the audience is not you, developed world people.
The OEMs sell these freedos machines in millions in the developing world, with the implicit assumption that right after the purchase we will install pirated windows on them. See for instance the top selling notebooks on perhaps the top online store of Turkey: https://www.hepsiburada.com/laptop-notebook-dizustu-bilgisayarlar-c-98?siralama=coksatan
5 out of top 10 selling machines come with freedos. And the practice isn’t unique to HP. Virtually all OEMs ranging from Lenovo and Asus to MSI and Acer does it.
The reason is to shave off the 50$ or more Windows price, and thus to be more competitive.
Of course businesses do not buy these, but they are more preferable to consumers.
I’m the author of the article: I meant the audience for the analysis, I wasn’t making any assertions one way or another about who buys FreeDOS machines.
I am the audience for that as a Linux user!
Nobody* would buy a laptop with a dedicated GPU and other latest technology like nvme with an OS that will not support any of those things. It would be a waste of money. So they will either, install Linux, install their own Windows license, or do as you said.
That being said, I have heard so many excuses over they years for pirate software, it has become amusing. And this is not only a developing world thing. Who is writing those cracks and keygens, and the p2p software? Many people from US and Europe engages in this, too.
Finally, the only excuse I could relate would be “I am a student”.
Sure, I have an obligation to pay for commercial software instead of pirating it.
However, that acknowledgement of my obligation to pay for commercial software is provided “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED.
Students often have free access to MSDN or the equivalent so no need to pirate.
cb88,
Yes Microsoft gets it.
Back in the day, while we were in charge of the student labs, we said “no more pirated versions”, and purged all Windows from department computers. How did Microsoft react? Set us up with a free MSDN subscription, with unlimited licenses to give away to students.
Adobe, MATLAB and others provide highly discounted versions, and usually have relations with the departments that need the software.
Unfortunately not all companies do the same.
Hard to imagine not loving this, it’s like seeing how computers really work, no wonder so many scammers and hackers come out of the 3rd world locations, they are trained up in the usually hidden fundamentals by corporate greed.
If I showed my kids or their friends this interface they would sit there waiting for it to boot!
Why don’t they just give a choice for Debian then.
Maybe they have an agreement with MS not to install Linux or Unix. Or maybe FreeDOS is allowed as a loophole, because of old DOS-based versions of Windows being mentioned in their agreement.
You didn’t even read the article. There’s a screenshot that shows that Ubuntu is also provided free-of-cost while Windows licenses cost 100 EUR and up.
It could be a marketing plot from Microsoft. Shipping the laptop with an unusable OS means that the users are likely to install their own Windows on it — even if it’s pirated. Should they instead order a Linux laptop and actually try to use it, they might find that it actually works and provides more comfort than being constantly harassed by Microsoft to get an authorized Windows license.
Or maybe it’s just a way for the manufacturers to signal that this laptop is compatible with your intentions to install a pirated Windows on it… People in less-educated parts of the world have completely bonkers beliefs and they learn things by copying people who learned the same thing before them. Probably 2000… ten years ago some guy found a FreeDOS laptop for a lower price and the legend of your savior was born…
This is conspiracy theory, but still sounds possible. I can’t honestly disagree with you.
To be honest, really I’m thinking it’s just about concenience. HP has probably been offering this option way before it started putting Linux laptops on the market, and they probably have more FreeDOS machines available than with proper Linux. So they are offering FreeDOS with all machines so as to not confuse their customers about which version they need if they’re looking for a cheaper machine that doesn’t have Windows pre-installed.
There is Ubuntu choice. And seems that Debian is installed anyway when you choose FreeDOS 😀
Not that I’ve tried but I’m guessing installing FreeDOS native on a new HP machine isn’t possible? Even in some sort of legacy BIOS mode? Answering my own question there probably is no such thing on this HP machine – secure boot UEFI have a nice day….
Yes. Article seems to confirm that.
The UEFI indeed does not have a CSM as far as I can tell. I might do a follow up post to see if/how it would be possible to boot DOS natively on this machine.
You could always give Clover Bootloader a chance.
This is all just junk worth wiping out immediately. This research has shown nothing of value.
FreeDOS is there to show the device works. That’s it. 99.99% of people nowadays don’t know a single thing about DOS and how to use it. Not even the “dir” command.
(MS|PC|Whatever)DOS doesn’t work under EFI anyways, so HP engineers cobbled together something functional. Kudos to them.
Anyways that’s all kinda stupid, not weird. They could and should have installed vanilla Fedora or Ubuntu LTS instead. At least that would allow people to browse the web right away.
FreeDOS is there to get around contractual agreements with MS that requires them to sell all computers with an operating system… or some such. They dont’ do it to prove anything and its totally to deal with some mid 90s bull crap lawsuit settlements.
Also FreeDOS almost certainly works on most UEFI computers as long as they have the CSM module enabled… and it can be made to work with alternatives like SeaBIOS and I forget the names but there are a few UEFI loaders out there that can load SeaBIOS.
AFAIK ADL based systems no longer feature CSM. I don’t think AMD will drag their feet as well.
This contractual agreement is about Windows OSes, PC-DOS has nothing to do with Microsoft, this agreement was cancelled more than a decade ago.
I’m sure there is a contract that requires an OS, but I can’t say for certain who its for or why. Years ago, you could buy a hard drive with free doc already installed cheaper than just a blank hard drive, something about the price a retailer could sell a hard drive as a upgrade vs as a new system. In order for it to be a new system, it had to have a hard drive and not be sold in a consumer package and have an operating system. So you got a new drive in some plastic clamshell with Freedos and saved like $50. Its possible that might be going on here with a dumb clause from one of HPE’s suppliers. with outdated language specifying Freedos. Freedos used to be preferred over Linux because it worked anywhere ( obviously not true anymore).
I had to look up SeaBIOS. Thom can do an article on it one day when there is nothing else to write about… I’m sure there will be a number of cBloggers that have tried getting FreeDOS to run on modern hardware for fun. I was just thinking with all the messing around with the HP EFI and such to get FreeDOS booting native the purchaser will likely fail trying to boot windows unless they reset the EFI/BIOS settings. Imagine the complaints/returns. So I guess this complex Linux booting FreeDOS in VM was the best way to avoid that nightmare.
I think there is a law in some countries that computers need to come with an OS. FreeDOS doesn’t demonstrate that the device works. Lots of stuff from the ability of the GPU to work in anything else than VESA and text modes to WiFI won’t work.. Not unless you have a DOS application accessing the specific hardware directly (highly unlikely). FreeDOS is there as a placeholder basically.
Don’t think – provide citations.
Works as in it “Powers on, shows something on the screen and react to the keyboard”.
OMG You’re so smart!
There’s NO test in the whole universe to check all the components thoroughly. Everything can fail and malfunction eventually even if it works first.
I guess people LOVE to disagree just for the sake of it without trying to employ their brain.
A lot of disagreement only to agree with me in the end. People are weird.
HPE is pretty heavy into Linux, so this is pretty cool. Most (if not all) of their server boot ISOs are Linux with a GUI App you boot into. IIRC, the firmware RAID provisioning tool on the servers is a Linux boot environment running a GUI app.
What’s surprising is how little of the conventional memory is left, you’d never get games running on it, IIRC you needed to load almost everything into EMS and have more than 600K of conventional to get some things to load.
I actually like on how in depth solution HP engineers used. Shows that GNU/Linux is a common thing for them. As for the article. If we take away other options people tend to use i do wonder if all people would really be prepared to pay in between 100 to 160 additional euros. Or would a substantial amount of them use the Ubuntu option instead. I do feel that the Microsoft Windows licenses are a bit too expensive. That is as a general purpose OS with monopoly position.
> I can guarantee you this will be a lot weirder than you think.
This really undersells it, if anything. What a wild ride.