Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

FreeDOS Turns 10 Years Old Today

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the in-the-beginning-was-the-command-line dept.

Jim Hall writes "The FreeDOS Project turns 10 years old today! PD-DOS was announced to the world on June 28, 1994. The PD-DOS project was later renamed to the FreeDOS Project. We've come a long way in 10 years. Today, FreeDOS is ideal for anyone who wants to bundle a version of DOS without having to pay a royalty for use of DOS. FreeDOS will also work on old hardware, in DOS emulators, and in embedded systems. FreeDOS is also an invaluable resource for people who would like to develop their own operating system. While there are many free operating systems out there, no other free DOS-compatible operating system exists. Read more about the FreeDOS Project history in the About FreeDOS page."

2 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why? by pnot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why on earth would anyone want to use a DOS clone?

    To run DOS applications.

    If you need something really simple with little overhead, combine your app with the OS features you need.

    What if the OS features I need are, in their entirity, "I need it to run this application"?

    DOS isn't a good fit.

    It's an excellent fit for DOS applications.

    If you need DOS for application support, then by God man, start porting the mission critical DOS app...

    Sure thing, as soon as you start paying me to do so.

    Seriously, though. If it's not broken, why fix it? Sure, it might be fun to port all those old applications to a modern OS, but who's going to pay for it? If you have a standalone machine already doing *exactly* what you need it to do, reliably, I see no need to start messing with it.

  2. Thank you by xYoni69x · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I recently took an assembly programming college course. The course covered Intel x86 assembly and development in the DOS environment (DOS interrupts, etc.). (Yeah, it's outdated. Oh well.)

    The DOS emulator in Windows is not especially great. Particularly, direct access to the video buffer is not always emulated correctly on my machine, the timer interrupt is not precise (not well-synchronized with other processes in the background), and a few other annoyances.

    Instead of fighting and arguing with Windows, I took my old unused Pentium 1 and booted into FreeDOS on it, after making an ODIN (a one-disk distribution of FreeDOS) boot floppy. I did my work on that computer, and the emulation was perfect.

    Thanks to the FreeDOS project!

    (Now I gotta figure out what to do with that P1... I think I almost have to install Linux on it, being a Slashdot poster and all.)

    --
    void*x=(*((void*(*)())&(x=(void*)0xfdeb58)))();