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FreeDOS

Posted by michael on from the when-autoexec.bat-was-king dept.

Jim Hall writes: "Newsforge [ed. note: Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN] is running an article about the FreeDOS Project. If you don't know: FreeDOS aims to be a complete, free, 100% MS-DOS compatible operating system, and is released under the GNU General Public License. It's a good read. From the article: 'But, in the true spirit of Open Source, FreeDOS is not content to be an imitation of the existing technology. ... Open Source talks about freedom to use, but it also means freedom to choose. FreeDOS gives people another choice. If you don't want DOS, try something else. But if DOS might be the key for that special device you are building, check out FreeDOS. It is definitely worth a look.'" We did an interview with Hall two years ago - looks like the project has come a long way since then.

3 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Don't B*tch :-) by lw54 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Before people start griping about why on earth anyone would want DOS now days, keep in mind there are many things FreeDOS would be useful for.

    Boot disks. A DOS boot disk with fdisk, partition magic, norton, or ghost is still quite useful at times.

    Engineering. Lots of engineering programs at univerisity's currently run on older OSes then we'd all like. FreeDOS will allow schools to use older software without having to pay licensing fees for the OS too.

    Distribution. It's easier to share old DOS games that no longer work under windows with your

    Emulation. Unix people can use this to load DOS programs.

    I'm sure I'm probably overlooking most potential uses of FreeDOS but I'm going to call it quits and let the rest of the group figure them out...

  2. boot disks, further implications by StandardDeviant · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Like I just posted over on the newsforge forum, this would be a godsend for companies that use DOS for their firmware/bios/eeprom flash utilities (perfectly understandably, you don't need or want the memory protection of something more sophisticated than DOS if your goal is to do dangerous, illegitimate, obscene things to various memory-mapped fiddly bits ;-) ). Why? The ability to distribute fully functional dos disks without license hassles, because more and more mainstream i386 users are losing the ability to boot to DOS (i.e. they're transitioning to NT-based Microsoft products or Unix-based things).

    --

    News for Geeks in Austin, TX
  3. Re:Why FreeDOS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    One might as well bemoan the wasted effort of Linux coders, since there's already an OS for the PC from Microsoft. Or the wasted efforts of BSD coders since Linux now exists.

    The above post was marked as "Interesting" by Slashdot moderators.
    Ahem.
    There's nothing at all interesting about stupidity, ignorance, and narrow-mindedness. Please make a note of it..