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23 Years Of The Open Source 'FreeDOS' Project (linuxjournal.com)
Jim Hall is celebrating the 23rd birthday of the FreeDOS Project, calling it "a major milestone for any free software or open-source software project," and remembering how it all started. An anonymous reader quotes Linux Journal:
If you remember Windows 3.1 at the time, it was a pretty rough environment. I didn't like that you could interact with Windows only via a mouse; there was no command line. I preferred working at the command line. So I was understandably distressed in 1994 when I read via various tech magazines that Microsoft planned to eliminate MS-DOS with the next version of Windows. I decided that if the next evolution of Windows was going to be anything like Windows 3.1, I wanted nothing to do with it... I decided to create my own version of DOS. And on June 29, 1994, I posted an announcement to a discussion group... Our "PD-DOS" project (for "Public Domain DOS") quickly grew into FreeDOS. And 23 years later, FreeDOS is still going strong! Today, many people around the world install FreeDOS to play classic DOS games, run legacy business software or develop embedded systems...
FreeDOS has become a modern DOS, due to the large number of developers that continue to work on it. You can download the FreeDOS 1.2 distribution and immediately start coding in C, Assembly, Pascal, BASIC or a number of other software development languages. The standard FreeDOS editor is quite nice, or you can select from more than 15 different editors, all included in the distribution. You can browse websites with the Dillo graphical web browser, or do it "old school" via the Lynx text-mode web browser. And for those who just want to play some great DOS games, you can try adventure games like Nethack or Beyond the Titanic, arcade games like Wing and Paku Paku, flight simulators, card games and a bunch of other genres of DOS games.
On his "Open Source Software and Usability" blog, Jim says he's been involved with open source software "since before anyone coined the term 'open source'," and first installed Linux on his home PC in 1993. Over on the project's blog, he's also sharing appreciative stories from FreeDOS users and from people involved with maintaining it (including memories of early 1980s computers like the Sinclair ZX80, the Atari 800XL and the Coleco Adam). Any Slashdot readers have their own fond memories to share?
FreeDOS has become a modern DOS, due to the large number of developers that continue to work on it. You can download the FreeDOS 1.2 distribution and immediately start coding in C, Assembly, Pascal, BASIC or a number of other software development languages. The standard FreeDOS editor is quite nice, or you can select from more than 15 different editors, all included in the distribution. You can browse websites with the Dillo graphical web browser, or do it "old school" via the Lynx text-mode web browser. And for those who just want to play some great DOS games, you can try adventure games like Nethack or Beyond the Titanic, arcade games like Wing and Paku Paku, flight simulators, card games and a bunch of other genres of DOS games.
On his "Open Source Software and Usability" blog, Jim says he's been involved with open source software "since before anyone coined the term 'open source'," and first installed Linux on his home PC in 1993. Over on the project's blog, he's also sharing appreciative stories from FreeDOS users and from people involved with maintaining it (including memories of early 1980s computers like the Sinclair ZX80, the Atari 800XL and the Coleco Adam). Any Slashdot readers have their own fond memories to share?
C:\DOS
C:\DOS\RUN
RUNDOS.RUN
8.3 character filenames
CON, COM, LPT "files"
EMM386.EXE and HIMEM.SYS, trying to get the "right" mix of EMS, XMS and Conventional memory for games.
Using dos "edit" or qbasic.exe for editing and running basic programs.
QuickBasic 4.5
Dos "Extenders" and 32-bit "flat" mode.
SMARTDRV.EXE to cache my drives.
"VESA" bios "extensions"...
setting the "BLASTER" environment variable "A220 I5 D1 T1"
Using the crappy "dblspace" program.. nothing but a fancy wrapper for pkzip
pkzip. lha, arj, unarj...
zmodem...
chkdsk, fdisk, and good old "format c:"
master, slave, 40 vs 80 pin IDE cables.
HD vs SD floppy disks.
ZIP drives, parallel ports, "real" serial ports, RS-232 electrical signalling levels
null modem cables
IPX/SPX network drives
10BaseT, CoAX networking, with terminators.
DesQview
Mouse Drivers, different ones for every mouse protocol out there.
MS-DOS "Executive"
And now, with a Raspberry Pi, or any "crap" PC that I find, I can run anything, with out worrying about memory limits, XMS, EMS, Conventional memory, extenders, IRQ's DMAs, Ports,
I do miss some things:
-5 second reboots
-no firmware updates for everything
-bare-metal programming
-Knowing all the hardware in my PC, no EFI, or Hidden Intel-ME firmware
Ralph Brown's Interrupt List..
Trying assembly language programming...
Calling interrupt 0x13h when I wanted 0x10h ,learning the difference between "set cursor position" and "format track" the hard way..
Learning about backups
DOS was awesome!
-No product activation
-No telemetry
-no copy protection
-no registry
-no DRM [ Digital Restrictions Management ]
FreeDOS should backport telemetry, DRM. copy protection, registries, and DRM.
My memory must be faulty.
I distinctly remember being able to ALT-TAB between Program Manager and other windows. I also remember while in Program Manager being able open a DOS window from an icon. But why would I when I just wanted to run Word Perfect 5.1 and didn't need Program Manager running to do that?
Don't forget that MS-DOS wasn't the only player out there. Remember IBM-DOS and DR-DOS?
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
How about 4DOS? Can I run pollyshell under freedos? Pollyshell was an implementation of unix commands under DOS. 4DOS was a command shell replacement that was smaller, faster, and had more features than MS-DOS. I loved the comandline history and editor that we take for granted today but was so freaking cool "in the day".
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
Why would it? The goal is to create a good OS.
I tried Linux DOS but bash, their version of command.com, isn't very good.
Now and then a customer needs something that only runs in DOS but have had their old Pentium III box die on them. FreeDOS will almost always run their application on newer hardware. It’s been a lifesaver!!
Free DOS has been a savior when you need a BIOS update and the vendor only gives an image loaded with some DOS executable.
If you were writing software that you wanted to distribute DOS with, such as games to be run on emulators, you can say do so with FreeDOS, whereas distributing with a version of MS-DOS could still get you in hot water. I've seen it running on embedded equipment for that very reason.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Most companies like GoG use DosBox for the purpose of distributing DOS based games with however.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
That was under MS Windows 3.0, 3.1, 3.11 and higher, where you would start multiple MS-DOS shell
The summary (and grandparent poster) was talking about Windows, not DOS. Weeboo0104 was actually right; you can control Windows 3.x entirely without a mouse with a few obvious exceptions like the paint program. But you could use the keyboard to operate the menus, move windows, click buttons etc. Each version of Windows since then has removed keyboard control until we have patheticness of Windows 10. Actually, that's a bit unfair because I think they improved things slightly between Windows 8.1 to 10.
Original MS-DOS 5.0 to 6.23 didn't have any ALT-TAB without Windows 3.x installed.
MS-DOS 4.00 to 6.22 did have the ability to ALT-TAB between programs using DOSSHELL.EXE. It was more limited that doing it in Windows in that all the programs had to share conventional memory (in the 640KB area). Here is a video showing how this works. Once you launch the programs from DOSSHELL, you can ALT-TAB between them.
I hope this helps you for your choice of the next operating system to use!
It might not be common now, but BIOS update packages of the past commonly would boot up a copy of FreeDOS, usually off a floppy diskette, in order to perform the BIOS update. Because the BIOS update was low level and needed to be run on a small independent software platform. This was common in the era of Windows NT and derivatives like W2K and XP.
I remember when computers and the Internet was filled with real computer users, i.e. nerds. Those were good times.
And then companies, marketing, data mining, governments and hackers arrived and ruined it.
#DeleteFacebook
Corporate copyrights last 95 years. If they become aware of you and see a chance for money, lawyers will harass/threaten/sue you right up to the 95th year.
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I tried Linux DOS but bash, their version of command.com, isn't very good.
There seem to be a lot of humourless mods today. That's comedy gold.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Well, it has saved the life of an old bit of kit from HP for me. I have an HP16500A logic analyser, that accepts analog acquisition cards as well. I bought one, only to find that the boot diskette for the machine didn't have the right code for the analog card. The code is all available online for download ..
Of course, they are not regular diskettes - they run 77 tracks, not 80. A DOS utility called LIFUTIL is used to write diskettes in the correct format. Only runs on DOS or Windows up to Win95 - no WINE I am afraid. My Win95 machine has finally bitten the dust, so I had to boot Linux on an older machine with a diskette drive, hook it onto the network, create a DOS partition, install FreeDOS on it, push the files to write onto the diskette into the DOS partition, boot FreeDOS, run LIFUTIL to write the diskettes and try them out on the HP.
I had to have a little lie down when it all worked first time. I have to say, that being able to run a DOS program that writes diskettes in some unnatural format is a great test of compatibility, and I was delighted to find FreeDOS; needless to say I will retain a GRUB Boot record for it, just in case for the future.
Most companies like GoG use DosBox for the purpose of distributing DOS based games with however.
DOSBox is an *emulator* (like VirtualBox and VMWare).
It provide some minimalist subset of DOS (like the above mentionned provide their own BIOS and/or EFI implementation).
But that's far from a full MS-DOS compatible environment. If you need anything DOSBOX's bare minimum (which is essentially just a minimalistic shell) you need FreeDOS (e.g.: MORE command)
For games that don't immediately take over the hardware and control it with BIOS calls and straight IO ports banging (i.e.: anything that uses a complicated .BAT launcher), you'll need extra parts and Free DOS is a nice source for you to get them.
(So DOSBox should be compared to FreeDOS, but instead to FreeDOS' kernel and a few critical .SYS)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The summary is going on about W3.1 not having a command line? WTF I remember W3 & W3.1 both having an MS-DOS Prompt option
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Even now it's not as compatible as MSDOS 6.22. Try running an old memory manager like QEMM386 or 386MAX. It would sometimes crash.
The first time I networked two of my own computers together it was from FreeDOS to Linux. It had to have been around 1997. I couldn't afford network cards, so I got a null-parallel cable, and connected them using PLIP (Parallel Line Internet Protocol) (like SLIP, but a byte at a time instead of a bit). The Linux machine then acted as a gateway connecting to the Internet using a modem and PPP. I was impressed that I had a TCP/IP stack in DOS.
PLIP was pretty quick at copying files between the two machines, much faster than my Internet connection.
I imagine there were many under his name, but the one on the shelf behind me (covered in dust, I just moved it now to see it, though it's been stationary for 15+ years) is called "The New Peter Norton Programmer's Guide To The IBM PC & PS/2", second edition, dated 1988.
Back in the mid-1990s, I bought my first PC. My friend (who lived across the country then) and I discovered "Doom" and the joy of death-matching each other directly over dial-up modems (at about $10 an hour of long-distance phone charges, if I recall).
.. So we had to manually restore the files one by one over the phone per my instructions. Idiot.
We used to share new maps with via floppy disk through the postal mail. Being a programmer, I studied DOS and wrote a computer "cold" that infected his PC (via DOS batch files) when he installed one of the maps I sent so that it would lock up his computer on his birthday, displaying a "Happy birthday!" message.
Weeks later, he calls me at three in the morning demanding I restore his computer to functionality. I told him to take that map disk and run the fixer tool that I put on there. He had already missed placed it in his sloppy apartment..
"run legacy business software"
It's been more than 20 years. What software would that be?
The most common example that comes up is when someone discovers old data that they'd like, or that they need, and today's programs don't read them. For example, Microsoft Excel doesn't read WKS files anymore.
I used to work in higher ed, and we had a researcher who uncovered some floppy disks with some old research data. They just had to get at the data in there. I recall it was a niche program, not a spreadsheet or word processing file, and nothing would read the data. So we installed FreeDOS on a machine, loaded the old program, and read the data then exported it into a plain text file.
These things come up from time to time, and it's nice to have FreeDOS around to help you.
have systemd?
[23 years] ... a major milestone for any free software or open-source software project
gcc, 1987, ~30 years old
X11, 1987, ~29 years old.
GNU HURD, 1990, ~27 years old (and lol)
Linux (kernel) 1991, ~26 years old
386BSD -> NetBSD and FreeBSD, 1992, 1993; ~25 years old
But 23 years is a nice accomplishment.
Yes... my dad has been using computers since before the IBM PC in his business, and every once in a while complains he can't use an old program or retrieve old data from a long forgotten format.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
(I somewhat regret not keeping a copy of the DRDOS source from when it was freely available.)
I still have my Caldera OpenDOS ver. 7.01 CD that I picked up at their booth at a yuuuge computer event back in 1997 (I think it was called Computex). It has a crack in the outside edge of it, which I only just discovered when I dug it out, but I was able to rip an ISO of it as there's only about 40MB of data on the disc. There were a handful of projects that tried making something of the code, but I don't think they went very far.
http://www.resoo.org/docs/dos/...
The copyrighters got the government to extend copyrights to the life of the author plus 75 years. Everytime Mickey Mouse is about to lose copyright protection they extend it further.
There are old Point-Of-Sale systems I still see. I customer has a storage yard gate controller that needs it. I imagine a fairly lengthy list could be compiled.
The difference is that FreeDOS actually works.
ReactOS works within its defined sphere, and the main difference there is the defined sphere. FreeDOS is able to achieve better stability because no one else is modifying APIs in its domain.
ReactOS, however, has always been on a moving target - instead of getting a complete stable Win95 API set then moving to Win98/98SE/ME/2k/XP/Vista/7/8/8.1/10, they change the target whenever Microsoft makes a new release. Thus they're always behind and will never be able to achieve a complete stable product.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
I believe DOSSHELL was actually a version of Windows internally - 1.0 or so. Windows/386 didn't actually come about until 2.something which was able to run in "enhanced" mode that let you actually bust through the 640k barrier (I believe Windows/286 let you do it up to 1MB or so).
The graphical environment is very reminiscent of Windows 1.0, and 1.0 would run exclusively in conventional memory at the time.
Seems like a waste of neurons that I still remember entering G=C800:5 from DEBUG to run the low-level format utility on the hard drive controller ROM.
Dear Will, the plums were poisoned. -- Cheese Club
That's exactly what I expect from the name "React[to the changes in the target you're trying to track]OS".
Which is no denigration of the system - I've not actually got round to dropping a spare HDD into a machine to try it - but simply tells me that they know and accept that they're going to always be playing catch-up.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
That's exactly what I expect from the name "React[to the changes in the target you're trying to track]OS".
Which is no denigration of the system - I've not actually got round to dropping a spare HDD into a machine to try it - but simply tells me that they know and accept that they're going to always be playing catch-up.
Yes, they've done a fine job; but by constantly changing it keeps from being able to make a more complete and capable system that can run more software and be more compatible in the end.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)