MS DOS: A Eulogy

roadhog95 writes: "Love it or hate it, I'm sure everyone's got a love story or traumatic memory of the infamous MS-DOS. Byte magazine reports on the passing away of DOS in light of the recent Windows XP launch. Even Regis Philben stopped by to pay tribute: 'Bill... Is that your final command prompt?'"

Comments

Quick and Dirty Interrupt Handler

[klmth]

Calling MS-DOS an operating system is stretching the concept quite a bit.
DOS was nothing but a glorified interrupt handler. It wasn't unstable, since there was practically nothing to be unstable with.

It didn't protect itself from userland programs, which is generally considered a bad thing. Granted, this gave the programmer freedom to completely work around the operating system, but at the same time allowed said programs to royally mess things up.

From a single-task, single-user system, it was quite good, provided the programs behaved nicely. DOS Extensions even provided it with protected memory, making life a bit easier.
New command interpreters, like 4DOS, injected new life into the system.
If you accepted it as a single-user, single-task enviroment, it was adequate.

I find the decision to remove any and all CLI from Windows a bit odd, considering that Apple went the opposite direction with Mac OS X.

DOS was good

[ankit]

People keep complaining about DOS all the time... about autoexec.bat, config.sys, and what not. IMHO, DOS was and _is_ one of the best and cleanest operating systems to learn about the intel architecture. Where else can you issue BIOS interrupts, and play around with system memory? Linux doesnt let me do that unless I compile a kernel module, and what not.
Trey, DOS wasnt the best desktop/server/handheld Operating System, but it surely was a great learning experience for all who used and programmed for it.

I still use TurboC on DOS when I need to try out some small program, and dont want to wait for linux to load.

Another point, I dont think you can ever have a successful operating system without any command prompt. Copying and moving files can never be as easy using a dumb GUI file manager.

Re:Why does Gates get the credit ?

[adubey]

Please mod the parent down. It isn't insightful.

Gates liscensed DOS from SCP. SCP based their product on CP/M, originally written by Gary Kildall.

DOS was advanced by the standards of microcomputers of the day. CP/M's 16-bit version, CP/M-86 wasn't ready when MS-DOS 1.0 hit the market, and by the time CP/M-86 did ship, MS-DOS already hit version 2.0. Version 2 had neat-o features like subdirectories and a Unix-like C API that pushed it ahead of CP/M. CP/M eventually did surpass DOS, but it was called DR-DOS by that time.

Of course, DOS was well behind most all versions of Unix, including Microsoft's Xenix. Peter Norton once wrote that Xenix might have been the "operating system" of the future. Unfortunately, Mitch Kapor wrote Lotus 1-2-3 to run under MS-DOS rather than Xenix. In those days, people bought PCs to run Lotus. The operating system was just the black screen with gibberish text you saw before Lotus booted up.

Re:Little content, little meaning...

[tswinzig]

Furthermore, I'd imagine everyone who's been working in computers for awhile has watched the Windows GUI break, and then need the command prompt to fix it.

Well I haven't seen the GUI "break," but I do still use the commandline, and it's still in Windows XP. It's just not DOS any more... Big whoop.

Re:16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit...

[micromoog]

Oh wait, it's better to have /bin for programs, and /usr/bin for programs, and /sbin for, uh, programs . . . some of which depend on files in various subfolders of /lib (or was it /usr/lib?) . . . much cleaner.

DOS Could have survived

[cr@ckwhore]

MS-DOS could have survived, if back in the early 90's, Microsoft had wanted to continue developing it. They made it obsolete by choice... I'm sure they could have easily turned it into a multitasking, 32 bit, networked OS, and still could have put a GUI on top of that.

It just wasn't in their best interested to do so.

Remembering DOS

[Delph]

Even through I now solely use Linux I will miss DOS. It was my first operating system and my lifeline whenever the users on the network screwed up with their Window$ boxes.

With DOS and Doom I learned syntaxsis, options and commands. It gave me the challenge and the boost necessary for me to head towards an IT career.

So long DOS, you were Window$ last hope!

Re:Remembering DOS

[stevey]

Even through I now solely use Linux I will miss DOS. It was my first operating system and my lifeline whenever the users on the network screwed up with their Window$ boxes.

I often think its funny how a lot of people cite the use of the command line as being a factor in slowing its spread.

Back in the "old days" everybody use DOS, and the command line ruled.

Maybe my friends weren't typical - but I remember in Windows 3.1 days many of them would say "Oh, that'd be easier in DOS".

Now with the GUI spread of Windows people are being taught to think of command line utilities as old fashioned - and less powerfull, which is clearly a mistake.

Re:Remembering DOS

[Rackemup]

Far easier to make a meanigful mis-click/drag/drop than it is to make a meanigful typo, and often easier to correct

You think so? I find it much easier to use a gui than a command line when moving/copying/deleting files. That right-click menu comes in handy, I can move entire directories across multiple networked drives in seconds with 3 clicks, while in DOS it would be much more convoluted, and you wouldnt have a recycle bin to hold those "mistakenly deleted" files...

I can't count the number of times I've tried doing some file management in DOS (usually while Windows was crapped out) and thought "man this would be so much easier in Windows".

Oh and let's not forget Scandisk... that oh-so-helpful windows tool to keep your drive in top-condition. The other day windows stopped working because of a faulty long-filename. I ran scandisk from the DOS prompt (because Windows would NOT load) and it told me "we found errors but couldnt fix them, run scandisk for windows". Gee thanks...

Now that I think back... weren't Win95/98/ME/2K all supposed to be "the death of DOS"... but years later and it's still around.

All the best games use DOS

[OmegaDan]

Im serious :) who is making games with *great storytelling* like the old dos games?

Dos games were great because the graphics SUCKED so you *HAD* to tell a good story to keep anyone interested ...

IMHO, 3d was the worst thing to happen to games. Kids buy games for "Awesome graphics" (tell me what that means someone)... because people are too stupid anymore to tell presentation from content! If you wrap a pile of shit in pretty box they'll pay for it ...

(end rant)

Re:MS-DOS is dead; long live AI-OS

[david duncan scott]

My only real gripe about MS-DOS was the weirdness of Paul Allen in declaring that henceforth all users should use a backslash (e.g., C:\mind.html) path-separator instead of the Un*x forwards-slash separator, as in http://mind.sourceforge.net/alife.html -- the way G*d intended computers to work.

You must not have been a CP/M user -- that's Kildall's fault, not Allen's. CP/M used the "/" for options, as in "program/opt1/opt2", and DOS was first and foremost a CP/M workalike.

Re:Fond .bat memories

[CaseyB]

Does anyone remember Edlin, the vi clone?

Edlin is more accurately a clone of ed, the line editor upon which vi is based. I'd bet that edlin predates vi.

DOS Hardly Gone

[The Borg]

Although various system calls and 16bit support may have disappeared, most of the DOS look and feel is still going strong in Windoze.

I havn't used XP yet but I'll be surprised if these DOS features have been removed:

Directory structures starting with a 'drive' letter

Text/Binary open Mode for files (the notorious ^Ms)

The inability to delete a file which is open

File types based on .xxx extension

OS compontents still using 8.3 filename format