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How (And Why) FreeDOS Keeps DOS Alive (computerworld.com.au)
FreeDOS was originally created in response to Microsoft's announcement that after Windows 95, DOS would no longer be developed as a standalone operating system, according to a new interview about how (and why) Jim Hall keeps FreeDOS alive. For its newest version, Hall originally imagined "what 'DOS' would be like in 2015 or 2016 if Microsoft hadn't stopped working on MS-DOS in favor of Windows" -- before he decided there's just no such thing as "modern DOS". An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
No major changes are planned in the next version. "The next version of FreeDOS won't be multitasking, it won't be 32-bit, it won't run on ARM," Hall said. "FreeDOS is still intended for Intel and Intel-compatible computers. You should still be able to run FreeDOS on your old 486 or old Pentium PC to play classic DOS games, run legacy business programs, and support embedded development."
By day, Hall is the CIO for a county in Minnesota, and he's also a member of the board of directors for GNOME (and contributes to other open source projects) -- but he still remembers using DOS's built-in BASIC system to write simple computer programs. "Many of us older computer nerds probably used DOS very early, on our first home computer..." he tells ComputerWorld. Even without John Romero's new Doom level, "The popularity of DOS games and DOS shareware applications probably contributes in a big way to FreeDOS's continued success." I'd be curious how many Slashdot readers have some fond memories about downloading DOS shareware applications.
By day, Hall is the CIO for a county in Minnesota, and he's also a member of the board of directors for GNOME (and contributes to other open source projects) -- but he still remembers using DOS's built-in BASIC system to write simple computer programs. "Many of us older computer nerds probably used DOS very early, on our first home computer..." he tells ComputerWorld. Even without John Romero's new Doom level, "The popularity of DOS games and DOS shareware applications probably contributes in a big way to FreeDOS's continued success." I'd be curious how many Slashdot readers have some fond memories about downloading DOS shareware applications.
The nightmares of all those TSR's is something that I don't want to visit ever again.
as for config.sys
just gives me the shivers just thinking about it.
Yeah, the problem is that the Internet is dominated by the voices of the PC generation, who somehow never learned that there actually was a long history of computing before the PC and MS-DOS.
CP/M and other precursor OSes are really only of interest to historians and nostalgic geeks, but DOS actually has some real relevance to many people and projects even today, thanks to FreeDOS and the fact that we're still running x86-compatible machines... which is sort of astounding, actually.
Sure, there was a long history of computing before the PC and MS-DOS, but it was constrained to very few people for the most part - specialists, hobbyists, professionals, academics, and so on. But it was really the PC, running MS-DOS for the most part, when the vast majority of people were introduced to computers for the first time. So, it's not all that surprising that DOS is seen - rightly, I think - as the OS most used at the beginning of the personal computer revolution.
Even so, I don't think that many people mistake that for the beginning of computing in general. If nothing else, they saw computers on TV, with walls of reel-to-reel tapes and flashing lights.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
According to Microsoft OS/2 1.x with Presentation Manager was the "upgrade path" from DOS. For users stuck with legacy software they were going to add a comparable GUI to DOS called Windows.
Windows had already been available for nearly three years before Presentation Manager was released with OS/2 1.1, and was introduced only three months after the OS/2 development agreement between MS and IBM was signed. At the time the agreement was signed, Windows had already been in development for about a year as a response to other PC-based UI products, and of course the Lisa/Macintosh. The PM API was designed to be similar to the Windows API, not the other way around, and still had some substantial differences. Interestingly, the original 1985 HELLO sample program that Charles Petzold based his famous "Hello World" example on will still compile and run almost unmodified under Windows 10, with the needed modifications mostly being limited to variable types that have since changed.
Having similar APIs was helpful, but they were different enough to make a common code base impractical.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
The number of older CNC machines I have kept running because of Freedos is huge. I have made a shto-ton of cash on smaller machine shops where "professional" IT companies have told them that they cannot fix the control system for their CNC machines.
I come in at $95 an hour and make it work again, custom is elated and trash talks the "professional" company that said it was impossible, I get more calls to fix more from other companies they spread the world on... Rinse and Repeat.
This was 10 years ago when I was almost doing 2-3 CNC repair jobs a week. Now it's maybe one every 2 months, and I don't even do IT professionally anymore.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yeah, the problem is that the Internet is dominated by the voices of the PC generation, who somehow never learned that there actually was a long history of computing before the PC and MS-DOS.
CP/M and other precursor OSes are really only of interest to historians and nostalgic geeks, but DOS actually has some real relevance to many people and projects even today, thanks to FreeDOS and the fact that we're still running x86-compatible machines... which is sort of astounding, actually.
Sure, there was a long history of computing before the PC and MS-DOS, but it was constrained to very few people for the most part - specialists, hobbyists, professionals, academics, and so on. But it was really the PC, running MS-DOS for the most part, when the vast majority of people were introduced to computers for the first time. So, it's not all that surprising that DOS is seen - rightly, I think - as the OS most used at the beginning of the personal computer revolution.
Even so, I don't think that many people mistake that for the beginning of computing in general. If nothing else, they saw computers on TV, with walls of reel-to-reel tapes and flashing lights.
The interview was about DOS, so I didn't talk about the other stuff before DOS (and after).
Our first "computer" was a mainframe acoustic coupler dial-up terminal my mom brought home for a week, so she could do some work at home. I wasn't very excited about it at the time; it was all business software and I was like eight years old.
I seem to remember we had another computer in the house at one point. Not a TRS-80 but something along those lines.
In 1982, my family bought an Apple clone (Franklin ACE 1000) and that was where my brother and I taught ourselves to write programs in AppleBASIC. I was fascinated by computer interfaces that we saw on TV and in the movies, so I wrote programs that emulated those, including the thermonuclear war simulator from the Wargames(1983) movie.
Some time after that, we bought an IBM (I think the XT). And that's what got me started with MS-DOS.
We used MS-DOS at home (upgrading to the '286 and '386 and '486) until I went to college with the family's old '386. During my university days, I had an account on the VAX and the Unix systems. I discovered Linux, and switched to that on my own computer (dual-boot with MS-DOS). I mostly avoided Windows at home, although I did run Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 for a short time - mostly for games. At work, I ran Apollo AEGIS/DomainOS, HP-UX, AIX, SunOS/Solaris, and Linux (RedHat 3.0.3 and later). Work also put me on a Windows NT4 desktop, which I ran for a while until they let me run Linux at work full-time. In the office, I've run either Windows (whatever was current) or Linux. At home, I just run Linux (I'm running Fedora Linux now) and use DOSemu or QEMU to run FreeDOS.
I have had the pleasure of corresponding with, and occasionally collaborating with, Jim Hall a few times over the years. He's not just active in the open source community, he's a really nice guy. Easy to work with, friendly and helpful. We've exchanged notes about package management, he's sent some patches to a project I was working on to make it more user-friendly (and DOS compatible). Jim manages to make a technically focused OS while being pleasant to work with. More open source project leaders could learn by his example.
I don't disagree with most of what's posted in this subthread, but I can tell you that DOSBox runs many things well. I've used it to keep Lotus Agenda alive, and to run WordStar, etc., on my Linux systems.
It does lack printing, which is an issue, but there are workarounds that can be automated.
Sure, if you want everything to work pretty much as-is, use FreeDOS[1]. But DOSBox does much more than gaming.
[1] I've found some things don't work on FreeDOS, usually those things that rely heavily on internals of memory or hardware management. For instance the task switcher Back & Forth doesn't work.