Slashdot Log In
FreeDOS 1.0 Released
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Sep 04, 2006 06:05 PM
from the begun-before-you-were-born dept.
from the begun-before-you-were-born dept.
Noksagt writes, "FreeDOS 1.0 has been released only a little bit later than planned. The 1.0 milestone is considered to be 'a stable and viable MS-DOS replacement' and features long filename support, HIMEM and EMM386 management, and CD-ROM support."
Related Stories
[+]
FreeDOS Not Dead; 1.0 Release Imminent 196 comments
Lisa writes "Jim Hall, creator of the open source MS-DOS operating system project FreeDOS, says that while work on the project may have slowed recently, he isn't ready to throw in the towel just yet. In fact, Hall says he hopes to see version 1.0 released as soon as the end of the month." (So rumors to the contrary can be safely ignored.)
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Bootability (Score:3, Interesting)
USB Bootability (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.sympato.ch/)
While most old BIOS aren't able to boot from a storage class usb device unlike modern one, there are drivers like DUSE and others [bootdisk.com], that enable the access to USB devices on those oldies.
So one could make a generic "boots DOS with USB support" bootdisk / bootiso and use it everytime you have to flash some BIOS / Firmware and want to save the new ROM on a USB stick. (The combination "USB BootISO + ROM on a stick" come VERY handy when flashing floppy-less boxes).
Front-ends :
A open variant of GEM (huh... Seals ?) is included in the "larger" distribution of FreeDOS.
Also, for those who need a small box just to surf the web, no need for a full graphical environnement, there stuff like Arachne [cisnet.com] (full graphical browser, GPL. Description at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]).
Great for a surfbox, and the old 386 on which you'll run it doesn't draw as much power as a Pentium 4.
hooray! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.mindlessbanter.net/)
Installer needs work... (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.varunnangia.com/)
Re:Installer needs work... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Note: Virtual PC does not "break" Aero. Windows Vista is explicitly designed to PROHIBIT Aero and serveral other parts of the operating system from operating if you attempt to use unapproved unsigned drivers or attempt to use any sort of debugger or attempt to use any sort of virtualisation mechanism or attempt to exert control over your computer in any way whatsoever.
Why?
Because if you were allowed to do any of that then you might be able to get around or modify the DRM schemes woven throughout the Aero desktop and other areas of your computer.
So it's not so much a problem with Virtual PC breaking Aero as it is a deliberate effort by Microsoft to sabotage Windows and deliberately selfdestruct Aero, and other Windows systems, against Virtual PC and against any other similar software.
-
Where does this fit into the map? (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Sunday January 21 2007, @01:58AM)
Can someone take a shell box, use this as a root OS, drop an equally front end on top of it, and come up with a Non-Linux OS variant?
If you have a linux box already, do you run this like a Free-Dos-in-the-box, to fudge portability for MS software?
It's brilliant. I'm not. Someone help me out.
Re:Where does this fit into the map? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Where does this fit into the map? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.hyperlogos.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 18, @08:19PM)
Actually, you almost certainly COULD get along using DOS as your home system these days. I'm at a loss as to why you'd want to, but it's not impossible. To get a decent range of functionality, however, WILL require that you use commercial software, not least to get an IP stack. Once you've done that, there's some old NCSA applications that support it, like telnet and even lynx.
If you want networked email, go looking for a very old version of pegasus mail for DOS; I think you can get POP3 but I doubt you can get any SMTP authentication methods whatsoever, although I guess you could manually pop-before-smtp or something...
The best use for DOS IMO is to run a BBS, but then, who wants to do that any more?
The most common use for DOS ATM is to run industrial control applications, because as pathetic as x86 is, doing x86 DOS assembler is really quite easy and was for a long long time by far the cheapest way to get anything done in terms of control systems. In fact most of the computer-driven machining equipment I've seen, even new stuff purchased in the last five years, is often DOS-based. There's a dinky, crappy PC inside a metal enclosure that probably cost more to design (per unit sold anyway) than your whole PC, and it's usually got some kind of interface board. The software is frequently still written in assembler because you may well neeed per-cycle accuracy to run your stepper motors or what have you.
The second most common use for DOS today is probably doing flash BIOS updates on PCs too stupid to load their BIOS without an additional program load.
Still waiting on Free/PM (Score:1)
(http://robotterror.com/slashdot | Last Journal: Thursday November 04 2004, @05:48PM)
FreeWindows 3.11 (Score:5, Funny)
This is exciting that we have a FOSS and functional equivalent of MS-DOS 6.22 (with some other features like long file names). I can run my old DOS games on my Mac with QEMU. Now, I wonder when somebody will get started on FreeWindows 3.11?
Dos 1.0?? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://easyvpshost.com/ | Last Journal: Friday August 26 2005, @06:58PM)
Re:Dos 1.0?? (Score:5, Funny)
They did beat Hurd out of the gate, though.
Why no link to the site? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.geocities.com/theLICC)
Re:Why no link to the site? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.funfail.com/)
RE: =) ! (Score:1)
(http://www.wanfear.com/~mbrito)
C:\>debug
-e b800:0 1 1 21 7
Nostalgia (Score:5, Informative)
(http://blog.mzzt.net/)
I actually know how to break that down... B800:0000 is the start of the ASCII video memory. First 0x1 is the smiley, next 0x1 is dark blue on black. 0x21 is !, 0x7 is light gray on black.
The memory is 4000 bytes long (longer if you use a bigger mode than 80x25) with 2 bytes for a screen tile. First byte specifies extended ASCII character (charmap.exe with font Terminal will show you all characters > 0x20), second specifies the color.
All colors that can be used are: 0 = black, 1 = dark blue, 2 = dark green, 3 = dark cyan, 4 = dark red, 5 = dark purple, 6 = brown, 7 = light gray, 8 = dark gray, 9 = light blue, A = light green, B = light cyan, C = light red, D = light purple, E = yellow, F = white. Note that the first nibble is the background color, second is foreground. By default, if you specify a background >= 8, subtract 8 to get the displayed background. The foreground will blink. Not sure what mechanism overrides this to allow "light" backgrounds, but I've seen it done.
How is this useful? (Score:2)
So, while I find the freeDOS project cool in a nerdy sort of way I do not see how the amount of effort that went into it was worth the actual usefullness of the project.
I'd like to see more focus... (Score:3, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/)
1. A means to boot a machine, load network drivers, protocol stacks and maps drives so I can run Ghost.
2. Other things like updating BIOSes
#1 is at the top of my list, obviously. Boot disks are pretty important. Bootable USB thumb drives and bootable CDROMs are good too. Need'm all. Seems like everywhere I look, things still seem to favor the Win98 DOS... it's annoying because I don't want to use those. For lack of a better term, I'd like to see more "marketting" focus on creating boot disk packages that people can use. Make'm as free as BSD so hardware makers can use them without worry. Philosophy be damned if all it does is make people nervous and hire lawyers, or worse, not use what is available because they simply don't understand it and can't afford a lawyer.
So if it were more available and better packaged, I think we'd get more than better acceptance of it, we'd get something of a clammoring for it.
I like FreeDOS. (Score:1)
Anywho, I know it must be good software because I'm not easily impressed.
Wow! A blue^H^H^H^H^H^H kill me.
This is what I've been waiting for! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://inglorion.net/ | Last Journal: Thursday October 06 2005, @07:17AM)
Old Dos Music Apps Can't Be Beat (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.spectralhorse.com/)
The Linux Dos emulator Dosemu [dosemu.org], uses FreeDos. Dosemu is extremely easy to install and use, and once you do, you have access to all the old Dos music applications that have now been released for free.
These include Sequencer Gold Plus [voyetra.com], and, if you don't like the tracker interface, the CMU Midi Toolkit [cmu.edu], which allows score info to be entered in a text file.
A lot of these original Dos programs really haven't been beat, and when combined with Linux and a modern soundcard and midi/soundfont instruments -- you can have a pretty robust home music setup.
I dunno man (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I'll grant you, you can get the DOS programs for free, professional apps are expensive. However I think it's misleading to say the DOS programs "haven't been beat." I think they have, badly. That's no knock on them, there's only so much you can do when 4MB is a large program and you've maybe half that much RAM. However that's not a problem anymore, and it's nice to see what you can do with a modern system. Sure it's cool to see a MOD player with a robust cubic resampling engine to pitch shift a single note several octaves without distortion. However it's even cooler to have a 5GB sample bank that doesn't NEED pitch shifting, because all the notes have been recorded individually.
nostalgia (Score:2)
no more mounting folders and general dinking around with DOSbox! Only dinking around with the real thing! Ahh the thought that I will soon see beautiful CGA graphics brings a tear to my eye. Alleycat as god intended it... sniff
Good job, guys! (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.mediachest.com/)
Will it run bioforge? (Score:2)
32 bit DOS extender? (Score:2, Funny)
So... (Score:1)
Now they can start with FreeWIN3.11 v0.1 alpha (Score:1)
(http://www.inspirelight.net/)
(Do they already have a FreeDOSShell? If not, they can do that first).
In 2016, they might be able to start with FreeWIN95.
2026 FreeWIN98
2036 FreeWIN98SE
2046 FreeWINME
2056 FreeWINXP
2066 FreeWINVISTA
Will Microsoft or FreeDOS be first with the Vista editions?
FAT Legal and others? (Score:1)
Who own FAT now? FREEDOS can use it ?
M$ is allowing this OS to exist? I know DOS is very own, and cannot be bought theses days but still Microsoft is leaving this "great" software freely available to the public?
DOS is alive and kicking. (Score:1)
FreeDOS... (Score:1)
(http://erroraccessdenied.com/)
Yaah boo sucks to the naysayers (Score:2)
(http://www.eruvia.org/)
Until recently, I was a FreeDOS user. I used it on a P100 laptop to connect to my Commodore 64 (the version of the connector cable I have requires a single-tasking OS). Is that a mainstream use? No, not by a long chalk. Is it a useful use? Well yeah, to me it definitely was. The C64 is turned on once in a blue moon to play the odd game or two, and the P100 (saved from a bin) let me transfer disk images off the net directly onto a 1541 floppy disk.
So that's one oddball use. Next up, two more mainstream uses. BIOS flash utilities? I'm on the Mac now, but I remember the majority of BIOS flashes being either required or recommended to be run from DOS. Then from reading some of the more useful posts to this thread I also learn it's in use within the embedded world. So that's two fairly mainstream activities where this helps.
And the final reason? Well....it's obvious. Just 'cos. That's a good and valid reason in itself, and the lack of appreciation for that thought within this thread is what's disappointing me. Just because someone hasn't spoon-fed you something shiny, it doesn't mean that the entire world disregards it. My congratulations to FreeDOS and the the positive posters, and once again - yaah boo sucks to the negative ones.
Cheers,
Ian
Wonder what grade Tanenbaum would give them ? (Score:4, Interesting)
what grade would you get for rewriting DOS 15 yrs later, and would it be higher or lower than the Hurd guys get for taking 20+yrs to get to 0.2 (but doing it the "right" way, with a microkernel) ?
"5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU" - Andy Tanenbaum, 1992
But... (Score:2)
(http://inglorion.net/ | Last Journal: Thursday October 06 2005, @07:17AM)
DOS is used is more places than you think (Score:1)
Related stuff (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Monday November 06 2006, @09:08PM)
(I am not affiliated with any of the software listed above)
Serious question: (Score:2)
Screenshots (Score:3, Funny)
(http://www.sharpdeck.net/)
Porting WINE to FreeDOS? (Score:1)
Flashback (Score:2)
"Now with EMM386!"
Umm, yay?
AM-100 Datalogger (Score:4, Informative)
Why go to all the trouble?? (Score:1)
(http://www.weasel.net/)
Just go to http://www.bootdisk.com/ [bootdisk.com] and download one of many different illicit/fuzzy/licit DOS bootable images, among others. These guys have been around for some time.. ^_^
--Weasel
Great, I've got a use for my old DOS books. (Score:1)
At last! (Score:1)
Yawwwn (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Wednesday December 17 2003, @08:53PM)
Does it run on Intel Powerbooks? (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Monday January 06 2003, @10:36PM)
The REAL reason for FreeDOS (Score:2)
IBM PC (Score:1)
Microsoft Word for DOS is now free as in beer (Score:1)
(http://web-owls.com/)
They had to fix a year 2000 bug and decided to give the software away rather than trying to sell it.
Word for DOS 5.0 was a really nice piece of work, although in my opinion the interface had started to go downhill by 5.5 (trying to copy the Windows interface too much).
Details here: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2005/11/25/free-file
If it's 1.0, why's it called Dos? (Score:2)
(http://jjjiii.livejournal.com/)
torrent file? (Score:2)
(http://www.hyperlogos.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 18, @08:19PM)
Hope Windows 3.11 will run on it... (Score:1)
16 megs max (Score:1)
now that i've (Score:2)
(http://www.latke.net/)
Mmmm... (Score:1)
Re:Moo (Score:5, Informative)
(http://kim.biyn.com/)
Re:Moo (Score:5, Informative)
Some BIOSes are include builtin flashing utilities that do not require one to boot into DOS.
Re:Moo (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:Moo (Score:5, Funny)
Not when my questionably elected, somewhat appointed, congressional representatives get done with them!
Re:Moo (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.hyperlogos.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 18, @08:19PM)
I agree it's a bit of a PITA but there's a zillion free downloads that include one version of DOS or another. I've had great luck with the extremely roundabout method:
Now, on one hand this is probably illegal by the terms of the EULA, which probably says you can use this copy of DOS only to run whatever utility. (Seagate, for example, will provide you with DOS on a floppy or CD image, in order to deliver unto you the hard disk utility they licensed. It's a very nice one actually.) On the other hand, who gives a shit? The only thing wrong with this method is that it's beyond many people.
The real solution is that all BIOS manufacturers need to implement loading BIOS flash files from, at the very minimum, floppy, ISO CDROM, or MS-DOS format USB device, partition 1. This would eliminate this whole thing. I guess if it came down to it they could always just let you do that by putting FreeDOS into BIOS :)
Necromancy (Score:5, Funny)
I guess it's rather the time for exorcisms now.
Re:Necromancy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not exciting... (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.piratetoystore.com/)
Someone put a tonne of effort into it, and you should have some respect for that at the very least.
Re:Not exciting... (Score:3, Informative)
(http://del.icio.us/Abcd1234/)
Re:Moo (Score:3)
(http://microsoft.toddverbeek.com/)
Re:Stable? (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/~nurb432/ | Last Journal: Friday August 27 2004, @03:24PM)
Re:Not exciting... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.hyperlogos.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 18, @08:19PM)
I wish I knew how you people find moderators dumb enough to mod this kind of crap up.
DOS is still heavily used in industrial control, with new programs being written for it every day. In fact, literally tens of thousands of computer-driven machining tools are running DOS right now as they run through their paces. DOS is literally the most popular OS in this space.
If people want to keep using those machines, and they're smart, they'll back up the programs right now, and burn them to a CD with a copy of FreeDOS. Someday they won't be able to find hardware their original DOS runs on. Of course, a lot of them just load from floppy, so all THOSE people need is a floppy image; they can burn it to a CD and boot from that someday when they can't find a 386 or a 1.44MB floppy drive for less than a hoijllion dollars.
Re:Not exciting... (Score:5, Informative)
Forgetting the embedded space for a moment, I downloaded FreeDOS 1.0 yesterday just for the heck of it, and installed it on an old P166 laptop I had lying around. I dumped a bunch of MP3 files onto it, and immediately began playing them with the included MPXPlay package. It took a while to get TCP/IP working on a 3COM 3C575 Cardbus adapter, but once that was done I had a nice DOS system with browsing, email, and a ton of other stuff.
As a matter of fact, FreeDOS is organized much like a typical Linux distro (even uses some of the standard DOS disk tools that come with most Linuxes) and includes a lot of applications if you get the full download. Memory management is very good: right out of the box it got more conventional RAM than I ever got with QEMM in years past. Some of the utilities are still a bit lacking in support for FAT32 and LFN, but overall a very useful package. Jim Hall and other contributors to the project are to be commended for their efforts.
DOS is as obsolete as the internal combustion engine.
Re:Moo (Score:3, Interesting)
(https://addons.mozil...&application=firefox)
Re:Not exciting... (Score:2)
(http://picknit.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday July 29 2006, @03:58PM)
There's also a lot of people who write embedded applications in DOS or DOS-like OSs. Having an open source alternative to aging, poorly supported closed-source OSs is good news to them.
Re:Ten years for a DOS clone..? You got to be joki (Score:1)
(http://slashdot.org/journal.pl?op=list&uid=911325 | Last Journal: Saturday November 10, @12:25PM)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
It's nice for legacy stuff - I had a client once that ran a QBASIC application and we had to set up a couple more machines for him. FreeDOS was nice and legal, since I had no idea how to buy a license for MS-DOS. It's not like you can walk down to the store and buy DOS these days.
I have an unopened copy of DOS 6.22 around here somewhere, but it's buried in a box, most likely. Probably next to my 70 NT4 Workstation licenses.
Re:Not exciting... (Score:1)
Not that it can't be used, but I think the world's pretty much moved to GUI and won't be going back. I just don't see a killer app coming for a new DOS.
Re:Alleycat (Score:1)
FreeDOS was a solid program even then.
Re:Just say No! (Score:2)
Re:Alleycat (Score:2)
Re:Moo (Score:2)
(http://tkatch.com/ | Last Journal: Monday October 29, @02:09PM)
Hmm.. next, i'm sure, comes FreeDows, but that name would just be too corny.
Re:Feature (Score:1)
Re:Moo (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
And if DOS is important to you (as it is to many, many people and companies) and completely open-source GPL'ed version that is beyond Microsoft's reach is certainly a good thing.
Re:But does it run.... (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Saturday February 19 2005, @08:28AM)
-uso.
Re:Where does that leave Linux? (Score:5, Funny)
DOS is the operating system used by some cameras (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Thursday August 23, @11:40AM)
Re:Not exciting... (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://www.weasel.net/)
Perhaps?? What, you're not sure how it's acting? Sometimes doing real damage..??? What?! Like how, causing your hard disk to burst into flames? Causing your monitor's side paneling to melt off? Please, be specific about how FreeDOS "perhaps, does real damage" to your computer! It is extremely hard to do any "real" damage to a computer through software means. The worst-case scenario is BIOS-failure-based bricking of your box, and if FreeDOS is capable or likely to do that, I would be very afraid, but this is simply not the case.
It generally takes a very specific and directed effort to cause "real damage" to a PC. It's well known that there have been a couple of viruses in the past which were capable of nuking your CMOS. However, a sledgehammer is just as useful if you're looking for "real damage".
evilviper also said: "The main thing I tried it for, quite recently, was partitioning/formatting, as Windows has a few limitations in that regard. After finishing the job, Windows couldn't even read the partion. FreeDOS is a LONG way from 100% compatible."
Which version of Windows couldn't see the partition? How big was the FreeDOS partition you tried? Does your BIOS support the size of the hard drive you were testing? In order to make such statements, one should be specific with the details. And if you really want to convince people to NOT use FreeDOS, you should maybe explain just how it "is a LONG way from 100% compatible." besides vague failures.. For all we know, the problem could actually exist between the keyboard and the chair, you evil viper you!
You seem to have a lot of Anti-FreeDOS FUD with no real facts to back it up.. You work for Microsoft, perhaps?
My personal reasons to love FreeDOS (recent Win32-ports aside): Terminal Velocity, DOOM, DOOM II, Descent 1 & 2, Death Rally, Epic Pinball.. The list is almost endless! And it's not for the gaming, it's for the nostalgia and memories.
--Weasel
You mean ReactOS (Score:2)
(http://myatomic.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday November 19 2006, @12:31AM)
The ReactOS team [reactos.org] is already skipping forward to FreeWin2k.
Re:Where does that leave Linux? (Score:1)
(http://www.rulingwars.net/)
Re:Ten years for a DOS clone..? You got to be joki (Score:2)
Re:I don't need DOS anymore (Score:1)
(http://www.mangaschool.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday January 03 2006, @07:51AM)
Re:Ten years for a DOS clone..? (Score:2)
(http://www.iccs.inf.ed.ac.uk/~s0239229/ | Last Journal: Wednesday May 23, @03:28AM)