Guest post by FreeDOS – the drop-in, open source replacement for MS-DOS – was started after Microsoft announced that starting from Windows 95, DOS would play a background role at best for users. Almost two decades later, FreeDOS has survived and, as its creator explains in the interview, is still being actively developed, despite achieving its initial aim of an MS-DOS compatible OS, which quite frankly is somewhat amazing.
Maybe I should give it another go, because the last time I tried it it crashed on the first DOS program I tried and I also encountered a number of bugs with FreeDOS itself.
Really? When did you last try it. I had our custom embedded system working on it ten years ago, working better on free dos than it did on the commercial dos clone it was written for. (I never convinced management to switch, though)
It may have been last year or the year before, but I’m pretty sure it was version 1.x. I installed it in VirtualBox. Maybe it doesn’t behave well in there.
Next time I’ll try it on a real PC.
Quite possibly. The DOSCore website actually mentions that they’ve had a lot of reports of problems under VMs and that, following their most recent set of updates, Microsoft VirtualPC is still the only VM that they test with often enough to work as intended out of the box.
Apparently there are problems with VirtualBox unless you change the emulated chipset to ICH9… which currently leaves DOSCore with no networking support.
Edited 2013-02-08 01:31 UTC
Or it could just be a modern pc hardware issue. I mean we were using pentium I class processors running at 150-230 mhz. Stuff that was designed to run dos/windows 95.
ssokolow mentioned FreeDOS does have issues running on virtual hardware. If your stuff runs fine I guess it’s safe to assume FreeDOS works pretty fine on real hardware.
Next time I’ll use a real PC.
FreeDOS is an interesting beast in that, like Linux in embedded devices, it’s a lot more popular than many
people realize.
I think every bootable disk or disk image I’ve ever received from a motherboard manufacturer has been running FreeDOS for things like its BIOS flasher EXEs.
(And, of course, it’s also a useful source of utilities if you want to pimp out your DOSBox setup)
Because it’s barely an OS, but in a good way.
Oh come on now….that’s like saying Linux without X, Gnome or KDE running on top of it makes it “barely” an OS. FreeDOS is worlds ahead of the old MS-DOS we remember. There’s nothing stopping anyone from running a decent GUI on top of FreeDOS.
I expect people on OSAlert to know the basic functionality of modern OS’es and features available in Linux kernel(even without the init daemon)
An OS on its own is of little value. We need it to run the programs on the computer – and for such purpose “barely an OS” seems to be quite enough.
Used it a few times, mostly in VMs and just to recover old stuff or play old DOS-based games. Works well enough. Hadn’t got used to the extensions, though, as I hadn’t needed them [yet].
Doscore is actually at the point where it is very usable as a Desktop. Installed ontop of Freedos or eDrDOS (for that lovely USB support) It is great for me, small speedy and cost almost nothing.
Finding suitable hardware can be tricky nowadays though.
I would not use it as my standard desktop, but as it is fully compatible with the old PLC devices i program i boot into it now and then since regular DOS has no multitasking what so ever whilst doscore has pseudo multitasking.
The reason i mention it is that whilst OS/2 is better at virtually everything DOS has some benefits.
I like the work DOSCore is doing. Also following another ‘distro’ that has opted, instead, to use 4dos as its’ command processor – LightDOS.
It’s nice to see continued development in this area by both FreeDOS and 3rd-parties working on some fun solutions. Good interview by Jim Hall in that he continues to see the project moving forward – beyond fulfilling the original goals of DOS compatibility.