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You want FreeDOS, free as in beer and GPL too. It works very well.

Fortunantly, GCC just about compiles on everything with a CPU

"Unfortunantly," last time I checked, GCC doesn't generate code for 8086 or 80286 processors, only i386 and up, so you can't build an OS that's backwards-compatible with legacy 16-bit apps with GCC.

How do u get [bochs] to emulate ps2???

First of all, it won't work with PS2 titles released in 2000 or later because those titles are designed for a different platform: Sony PlayStation 2. Bochs emulates IBM Personal System 2; many PS/2 titles released before 1994 work in Bochs. However, there are still thousands of titles on abandonware sites such as this that run on IBM PS/2.

Once you know you have an IBM title and not a Sony title, just read the Bochs manual to learn how to install DR DOS or FreeDOS and then read the game's manual to learn how to install it to Bochs's virtual drive.

Freedos requires less resources.

1) Gaming compatibility. There simply is no alternative to using a Microsoft OS if you want to be able to play the vast majority of games that have been made for the PC in the last 20 years.

In other words, you refer to PC games released from 1982 to the end of 2001. You can get 99% MS-DOS compatible DOS from IBM or from Lineo. You can get a 90% MS-DOS compatible DOS from the FreeDOS Project.

Sure, you can run *most* DOS games in DR-DOS--but not all of them

Name some titles? Do they work in IBM's PC DOS?

and at any rate you'd still have to boot a Windows variant to play all the Windows games.

If the game was released before 1996 (that's 14 years of PC games), it probably runs under DOS because DirectDraw didn't come out until 1996, previous Windows versions (without DDraw) lacked the video performance of DOS (e.g. no 320x200x8 mode), and most Windows 3.1 games have free clones by now anyway.

Or just get a Nintendo GameCube or Game Boy Advance and skip the whole thing.

This is especially true since so many Linux apps are enigmatically named

How is it any different on windows? Notwithstanding Microsoft's marketing, how can you tell "Excel" stands for a spreadsheet program? What about "Outlook" for an e-mail and calendar program? What about "Napster" or "Limewire" for a media sharing app?

(how are we supposed to find them in the first place?)

OSDN Freshmeat.

Anyone knows instantly what Media Player does--it plays media, like movies and sounds. Great. But how is an end user supposed to know what xanim does?

xanim: take off the x and you get 'anim' which is one letter away from the 'anime' videos.

I need Photoshop for image editing--The Gimp is okay, and I can do some script-fu with it that I can't under Photoshop, but it isn't as powerful in most respects, is more clunky and difficult to use, and lacks CMYK color separation which is a must for many graphic artists.

Photoshop costs $600. Photoshop Elements (same thing as Photoshop without the CMYK stuff; feature set similar to that of GIMP or Jasc's Paint Shop Pro) costs $100. What's the difference? The royalty for the PANTONE patents.

you see, I'm set in my ways and attached to my apps ... There would just be too steep a learning curve to make the effort worthwhile.

Would it cost more than $900 (XP Pro license + Photoshop license) to retrain you to use Free software?

Compatibility with the outside world.

As long as you use standards-based file formats, you should be safe.

Why should I put up with not being able to use a film clip, when I could have done so with Windows?

Why should you put up with stock film vendors who do not make their collections available to their customers in MPEG or MPEG-4 format?

There are some pretty strange and obscure file formats that have been developed over the years, but almost alays there is software for Windows which will handle it.

If a file format is obscure enough, the software that can convert it to a more transparent format tends to be older, and WINE tends to run older software more reliably.

B) Chasing Amy uses (pirated) Windows. Microsoft gets no money from him.

Microsoft gets $100,000 from him, maximum statutory damages in the US for copyright infringement.

Of course, there is still FreeDOS. If I were distributing a BIOS upgrade, I would distribute a bootable disk image using FreeDOS. Then there are no licensing issues to work out with Microsoft, and you don't have to worry about what OS people are running.

Oh, and don't forget about OpenDOS, the now-free version of Dr-DOS.

Dos is alive!

DOS is definitely alive and well, and I'm not just saying that because I founded the FreeDOS Project. :)

DOS is still used in embedded systems all over the world. The last time I checked, McDonald's cash registers were still running DOS with a McGUI. FreeDOS also appears in such cool devices as a pinball machine! (I think that one is my favorite.)

On our web site we recently posted a news item about running FreeDOS in a PDA. A few weeks ago, we posted a "success story" from someone who uses FreeDOS to support various doctors' offices.

Is DOS going to remain in the limelight? Well, probably not. DOS hasn't really hit the big news in a long while, and I suspect that DOS will remain the mainstay of embedded programmers for a long time to come. But the desktop war has been taken by Linux (and that other company... they also have a GUI with windows...) While FreeDOS+SEAL is very cool (think KDE) I think we'll see that you'll only find FreeDOS on desktops in places that cannot afford the bigger, newer, shinier systems.

-jh

DOS is definitely alive and well, and I'm not just saying that because I founded the FreeDOS Project. :)

DOS is still used in embedded systems all over the world. The last time I checked, McDonald's cash registers were still running DOS with a McGUI. FreeDOS also appears in such cool devices as a pinball machine! (I think that one is my favorite.)

On our web site we recently posted a news item about running FreeDOS in a PDA. A few weeks ago, we posted a "success story" from someone who uses FreeDOS to support various doctors' offices.

Is DOS going to remain in the limelight? Well, probably not. DOS hasn't really hit the big news in a long while, and I suspect that DOS will remain the mainstay of embedded programmers for a long time to come. But the desktop war has been taken by Linux (and that other company... they also have a GUI with windows...) While FreeDOS+SEAL is very cool (think KDE) I think we'll see that you'll only find FreeDOS on desktops in places that cannot afford the bigger, newer, shinier systems.

-jh

here @ freedos.org

I have used it for formating and fdisking fat16
and fat32 filesystems, or to remove linux
partitions without a linux bootflop or bootcd.

And i know people using DOS for there daily
programming, creation of Embedded Systems and
ofcourse webbrowsing and chatting....

Quazion.

They are both at their respective .org
FreeDOS
DOSEmu
There is a lot of info on the net too, just google it.

One successful project that wasn't mentioned is FreeDOS, a free reimplementation of DOS. Unlike the others it already has a huge amount of software written for it. Still beta though.

By far has to be FreeDOS. Although development is slow, and the user base pales in compairason to others like Linux or FreeBSD, it's really amazing what they've done. The developer's list has 500+ people on it (most inactive) and recently the system is getting pretty good. Back 10 years ago, DOS was by far not a niche OS, but today it has become. Sad it is, but glad that some people accually understand that for such a simple OS, it's quite extendable.

Oh, and of course, by favorite GUI to go ontop of FreeDOS: DWin. Not much to use yet, but i really enjoy it.

It's only slightly offtopic... OpenOffice 638c (latest build) is probably pretty close to StarOffice 6beta.

The other day, I downloaded OpenOffice build 638C for Linux and for Windows. I use Red Hat Linux (7.1) at home, and I already use StarOffice (5.2) for my regular office needs. It works great. I think my main complaint with OpenOffice is the silly desktop. Other than that, I consider it a fully functional office suite that can replace my MS Office needs anytime.

I didn't see any cool OpenOffice screenshots, so I made my own of the text document program. I didn't do any (yet?) of the spreadsheet program, or presentation software. These were really captured for the benefit of my brother, but I'm posting them here so that others can see them.

Currently, all links point back to www.freedos.org but this will change as I make further updates to the news CGI system. :)

Currently, all links point back to www.freedos.org but this will change as I make further updates to the news CGI system. :)

Also, several years ago, my Dad needed a copy of DOS... it was for a terminal computer that sat in the corner of his office doing a single task. Guess what? DOS was unavailable.

He could have used FreeDOS of course, if he only needed DOS 6.x

Yes. And guess what? IBM still sells PC-DOS, and the FreeDOS project is still going.

Just because Microsoft is there doesn't mean there's no point.

mrg

If all you want is DOS, get Bochs and install DOS on it. Bochs just emulates a full x86 CPU & hardware, but it will be plenty fast enough for DOS games. Hell you might even be able to use FreeDOS, which would make it absolutly no cost to you.

Oh yeah, I use the zip install packages. I find it is easier to install, since I know everything is there. I'm also a command line guy so I don't mind using unzip from the command line.

Installing the newer releases in a separate directory has made it very easy for me to roll back if I don't like something in the newer release. It also makes it easier to report bugs - is this a bug that appears only in the new version? I close the new Mozilla, and open the old one, and re-test.

I recommend this to anyone who is running Mozilla on Windows.

Why of why do people use MS BS? No insult to the fine folks above, especially freedos, but the alternatives are better used together rather than piece wise. Openssh on a PC with IE and Outlook is not secure in anyway. Don't throw your computer out the window, throw windows out of your computer!

I believe its a gpl-dos and I wonder if the project is even alive. Anyway, for your 486 dos based computers, I would use it so you do not have to pay Billy the tax.

I would highly recommend Debian or a minimal install of SuSE, because you get gobs of stuff that you don't get with freedos. I know there is a clone of turboc, xwipe, emacs and gcc, perl and python and even apache runs pretty slim on an old 486 in console mode. Also, unless you have a copy of Microsoft NET or Lan Manager, dos is not networkable. I recall dos doesn't like the size of the tcp/ip stack so this is another reason to install linux instead of freedos.

Why not MS-DOS? I'm serious, 6.2 was relatively mature by microsoft standards, and god knows there are enough programs that run on it.

god knows there are enough programs that run on it.

Use a Unix based machine an unzip them (prevents that zip password crap).

Or, if your machine for some reason can't run Linux or a BSD, you can download a DOS version of the same unzipper (Info-ZIP UnZip) that is distributed with most Linux distros, and run it on FreeDOS.

Does Microsoft still sell MS-DOS? No. For desktop systems, Microsoft is pushing Windows 2000 Professional Bloatware Edition. For embedded systems, Microsoft is pushing Windows CE. You can still, however, get a DOS-compatible operating system from other publishers. For example, GPL'd FreeDOS is very popular among comp.os.msdos.programmer regulars.

DR DOS is a $39 shareware clone of DOS. FreeDOS is a GPL'd clone of DOS with a few bugs (e.g. it irreparably corrupts any drive larger than 512 MB).

Last time I checked, reading or writing disks larger than 512 MB under FreeDOS caused irreparable damage to their filesystems (format c: anyone?). Patches Are Welcome.

buying a copy of w98se just to boot to the dos prompt legally seems kind of... well, if not silly, at least overly anal. if it's that important, freedos works too.

The simplest solution though is FreeDOS: a free, open source MS-DOS clone. I made a boot disk with it that works fine for BIOS updates and such.

Microsoft has already abandoned DOS totally

But the embedded market hasn't. Neither have these guys. And the FreeDOS Project is even creating a GPL'd DOS clone.

Microsoft QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System; no, really) is dead (Win2k; Whistler). Lineo and the free software community make two DOS operating systems now. IBM also makes its own PC DOS 2000.
<O
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XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!

Also consider that if Microsoft ever open sources parts of their OS, whether by choice or force, Open Windows will be well positioned to take advantave of that.

On the one hand, Linux is adapting to Desktop computers in terms of integrated features and this is a good thing, nobody questions that, but on the other hand, Linux's size means its suitability for embeded applications becomes questionable. Not as questionable as using NT but still... (correct me if I'm wrong, and I wish I were, but I do have heard micros~1 is pushing its NT kernel (if there is such a thing...) for embeded applications)
Anybody remember this /. article about a cash machine BSODing?

Now... there is always a way to compile a custom kernel with minimal functionality, thanks god! the size of the compressed kernel source means for a great part that there are now lots of features / drivers / functionality that were just not available a couple of years ago.
However, how does a minimal 2.2.10 compares with a 1.2.13? (both considered stable if I recall correctly)

This is important, because projects like linuxrouter depend on being embedable, either on a floppy or much much more important, on devices like the diskonchip thingy. Do you see the market? routers, dns, xterms, you name it! Any of those devices could work on an embeded 486 with 8Mb or more of RAM. Is this 486/8Mb under my desk, a masquerading router/caching DNS? I thought so too.

Now... you can spit on Linux, and use QNX ( check it, QNX is the king!).
OR, because we're dealing here with a minimal Linux, actually designed for embeded applications, there is a lesser chance to get it wrong, therefore adding to security /stability / once again, you name it. Also, but some people might argue this is not the point (then please tell me what is the point about Linux), make it more attractive to hardware hackers.
Hackable alternatives to QNX might include katix, ELKS or even FreeDOS... and of course, uClinux.

Well well well,those are just some thoughts of mine, I'm nowhere involved with The Kernel, therefore I'm not in a very good position to critisize it, I just hope that the right people have reached the same conclusions or are aware of the fact that we may loose an important market if we only concentrate on desktops and above.

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Alex Bischoff
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