In a few days, 29 June, FreeDOS will turn 30. This happens to make it one of the oldest, continuously active open source projects in the world, originally created because Jim Hall had heard Microsoft was going to kill DOS when the upcoming Windows 95 was going to be released. After seeing the excitement around Linux, he decided it an open source DOS would be a valuable time investment.
I still used DOS, and I didn’t want to stop using DOS. And I looked at what Linux had achieved: people from all over the world shared source code with each other to make this full operating system that worked just like Unix. And I thought “If they can do that with Linux, surely we can do the same thing with DOS.”
I asked around on a discussion board (called Usenet) if anyone had made an “open source” DOS, and people said “No, but that’s a good idea .. and you should do it.” So that’s why I announced on June 29, 1994, that I was starting a new project to make an open source version of DOS that would work just like regular DOS.
Jim Hall
For an open source implementation of what was a dead end and now is a dead operating system, FreeDOS has been remarkably successful. Not only are there countless people using FreeDOS on retro hardware, it’s also a popular operating system for DOS gaming and running old DOS applications in virtual machines. On top of that, many motherboard makers and OEMs use FreeDOS to load firmware update tools, and some of them even offered FreeDOS as the preinstalled operating system when buying new hardware.
With the ever-increasing popularity of retrocomputing and gaming, FreeDOS clearly has a bright future ahead of itself.
I’m still kind of baffled that there isn’t a true 16bit Windows clone, a la win3.1. Sure, 32bit and 64bit Windows compatability is more desirable, but it is also much more complicated. A simple Windows 3.x compatible system on top of FreeDOS would be a wonderful addition to the FOSS world
Wine is/was compatible with 16 bits and there was also WABI.
Neither of those are what i’m asking.
I mean a true open-source DOS “shell” that’s win16 compatible. Not a compatibility layer that runs on UNIX
https://github.com/otya128/winevdm ?
OK, can you get it running on top of FreeDOS on a 386?
It was never very active .. unfortunately.
The kernel didn’t change very much in years and it did keep feeding on stuff that people made for the original DOS, which is now free anyways.
pfgbsd,
What more do you want from FreeDOS? DOS was pretty basic to begin with. Hasn’t FreeDOS already been a suitable replacement for MSDOS years ago? I’ve seen it used for legacy commercial applications and I thought it was as good as the “real thing”.
AFAIK it still cant run 386 enhanced mode windows on top of DOS… so there is that.
cb88,
That is interesting. It isn’t something I ever needed, but I guess windows was more selective than other software.
Apparently DOS 5 has some windows specific interrupt calls that windows 3.1 “enhanced mode” checks for in order to run. As of a couple of years ago these windows interrupt calls were not built into freedos by default, though the patches do exist…
https://danielectra.github.io/blog/windows-31-on-freedos
https://github.com/FDOS/kernel/commit/9186e6c5ed1ab58bf1dc0497bacc352d3d758703
It is not clear to me if these have since been patched into the official freedos binaries? I don’t have a copy of windows 3.1 to test with and wouldn’t have a reason to other than as a curiosity.
Then experts on DOS emulation mentioned a “redirector” was needed in order to make it really useful I forgot exactly what that meant, I think it was related to the enhanced mode but later came out the “free” DR-DOS from Caldera so we went for that instead. This was for gaming basically,
Then Microsoft did every effort to kill DOS along with any software competitior for their flag products and that was it, we know the rest of the story.
I’ve recently gotten my hands on the Pocket 386 and Pocket 8086 (NEC V30 8086 clone, actually) devices. I’ve also got a bunch of CompactFlash cards and for one of them I will (finally) give FreeDOS a serious try.
I’d love to do a sort of review on the devices for OSAlert, btw, but I’m not very secure about my writing skills. Please let me know if anyone is interested in this and I might give it a shot.
I for one would love to see a review/article about FreeDOS on the Pocket 386! I wish I had a spare $200 laying around to get one for myself but I can’t justify it for something that would end up in a drawer somewhere a few weeks after I got it. Hell, I haven’t touched my Steam Deck in weeks (though I have the excuse of being in the midst of a life changing event right now).
I’ve got one and it works great with FreeDOS. I mostly use it to run WordPerfect 5.1.
How does FreeDOS handle integrated audio on motherboards today? Is anyone working on this? Are there any plans to create or port such drivers from GNU/Linux?
I have come across this project on GitHub recently, although I haven’t had the chance to try it out. Given the high compatibility with DoS, I think this should work on FreeDOS aswell. Might be what you’re looking for:
https://github.com/crazii/SBEMU
Writing drivers for Intel HD Audio is an unholy mess of conditional code and runtime state management even for a protected-mode multitasking OS like Haiku. Trying to fit a TSR into 640K? Forget it. You’d be better off aiming for a USB audio class driver.
If you want THE best DOS out there then you want OS/2 which is currently maintained and updated to run on computers built in 2024. If you are interested in a NON free operating system when it lets you control lots of configuration settings for every DOS and 16 bit Windows sessions INDIVIDUALLY so that each program including VINTAGE GAMES there is nothing better than https://www.arcanoae.com/arcaos/ which is OS/2 for 2024 and beyond. They are currently on version 5.1 so this isn’t a new rodeo for them.
NO, I do NOT have any financial or personal connection with the company itself. I’m just a big fan of OS/2 because of how I can control DOS memory so much better than any DOS or DOS emulator out there. In you are into vintage DOS or Win 3.1 games or programs in general, ArcaOS is THE OS for you.
And for those people that don’t like it, I bet you’ve never used it and that you are only going on things said by other people that might have used it back in the day who didn’t get how to change the settings and therefore was a failure for __them__.
I’ve done things SUCCESSFULLY in OS/2 that I’ve never been able to do in any other operating system when it comes to memory settings for DOS and Win3.1 sessions. I once had over 300 HUNDREDS problems running on a 32 MBs of RAM. They were all medium sized programs that were a combination of DOS, Win3.1 and OS/2 programs. From databases to spreadsheets to WordPerfect for DOS and Windows at the same time.
And while this was back in the day before non-dial up internet, I was able to run all of that AND have eight modems working at the same time WITHOUT any drops which Windows never could do with ANY version. No, we don’t need to worry about that anymore with modern day internet. But that’s just another proof of what you can do with OS/2 that I never could do with any other OS. With other OSs I need three or four or more computers to run 300 medium sized programs AND have eight modem sessions at the same time.
Just imagine what you could do with 32 GIGABYTES of RAM and non-dial up internet. It’s fast, there are VERY few viruses, and it is a 365 24/7 rock solid OS. And yes you can crash it. But there is no OS on the market that I can’t crash without 20 seconds. It’s all about what you use and how you configure it to have a great experience.
Unfortunately it is kind of expensive but that is because it is geared for businesses that need their programs to run 365 days a year 24 by 7 and it is still used by a lot of banks and businesses around the world on millions of computers. It is NOT dead like some people think it is.
Yes free DOS is free. But then you can’t do much compared to ArcaOS, a.k.a. OS/2.
IMHO, FreeDOS made one very bad mistake.
Every other DOS has CONFIG.SYS, FreeDOS decided to be different and named the file FDCONFIG.SYS.
I’m sure this must cause problems with the many applications that modify or read CONFIG.SYS!
The examples I can remember is the SoundBlaster setup and Adaptec setup.
Probably a lot of other hardware setup programs will also have problem wth FreeDOS.
If FreeDOS 2.0 is ever released, they need to change it back to CONFIG.SYS (remove all references to FDCONFIG.SYS).
Also if FreeDOS 2.0 is ever released, it would be great if it has: 100% compatibility with all Windows 3.0 – WFW 3.11.