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FreeDOS Turns 10 Years Old Today
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."
The real question is does it play those old games. I miss SimAnt, SimCity (the DOS Versions), Warcraft, Leisure Suite Larry, Space Quest, Heros Quest, Police Quest, Kings Quest and all the other old dos games of the time. Heaven forbid running these on MS-DOS.
I use FreeDOS quite (well, relatively speaking) often, but only for one thing - flashing my motherboard BIOS. I got rid of floppy drives long ago, after my last one died back in the previous century, and haven't looked back. Usually, I'll download the FreeDOS ISO, inject the drivers into it and burn it to a CD-RW. Then just boot up from the CD, flash the BIOS and I'm good.
I find it humorous that it's still in Beta after 10 years of development.
I'm not poo-pooing the effort, but you have to admit that that's a long time before declaring 1.0!
Funny that this should come up as I only noticed yesterday that Dell sells systems with FreeDOS now.
e .a spx/desktops_n?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/compar
This is great as I've been buying the cheapest SC servers to avoid the microsoft tax. With prices starting at $319, i can now afford to buy the 20 or so systems i was planning on for the business. nice
Considering that the original API's were based on CP/M, I don't think M$ would have much of a leg to stand on. In addition, Seattle Computer still retained some rights to DOS after it was sold to M$. Thirdly, back in the 80's, M$ allowed a couple of the big guys to sell their own versions - most notably Compaq with version 3.31 (first DOS to support more than 32 MB per logical partition).
I don't see why some people dislike DOS.. Is it just because you teens have not ever used it, or your Linux/WinXP is so much cooler? Whatever, I don't care. You still have to use DOS to upgrade your motherboard/GPU BIOSes. You know what a BIOS is, do you.. I've even made one!
I just did a bootable 1.44MB FreeDOS floppy that plays mp3/ogg files with MPXplay, and then put it on to a bootable CD-ROM with all the music content I like. Voila, free, open source, standalone car/home/whatever music player which does not need a hard drive (for swapping). Just boot from ATAPI CD-drive and play some tunes, even at your friend's house!
Now try to do that with Linux/Windows/*BSD. I would have if I'd know how to do it. Preferably with a BSD system.
I was looking a player that could play tracker songs (you know, those before mp3s when 80386 and dinosaurs ruled the earth), mp3s and oggs, but no DOS player can do that as far as I know. XTC-Play could do tracker songs and mp3s, but not oggs.
I will eventually put a website of the bootable FreeDOS ogg/mp3 CD project. Maybe post it here..
Say what you want about FreeDOS, and Free software in general. But FreeDOS has won. No one need ever pay for MSDOS, DRDOS, or PCDOS again. Those programs are dead. Surprisingly, a 25 year old operating system (even older if you count predecessors like CP/M, TRSDOS, and VTOS) still has uses.
While not 1000x better, as a previous AC posted, ReactOS is taking up where the FreeDOS project left off. If completed, it will replace more Windows and OS/2 systems than it's nearest free competitor.
Have you Meta Moderated t