This last week the old disk operating system for IBM-compatible PCs, FreeDOS, turned 23 years old. Jim Hall, who started the project, writes the following:
On June 29, 1994, I made a little announcement to the comp.os.msdos.apps discussion group on Usenet. My post read, in part:
Announcing the first effort to produce a PD-DOS. I have written up a "manifest" describing the goals of such a project and an outline of the work, as well as a "task list" that shows exactly what needs to be written. I'll post those here, and let discussion follow.
He is collecting stories about how people have been using FreeDOS and will do so until the middle of July.
Related Stories
Two big things happened in the world of text-based disk operating systems in June 1994.
The first is that Microsoft released MS-DOS version 6.22, the last version of its long-running operating system that would be sold to consumers as a standalone product. MS-DOS would continue to evolve for a few years after this, but only as an increasingly invisible loading mechanism for Windows.
The second was that a developer named Jim Hall wrote a post announcing something called "PD-DOS."
PD-DOS would soon be renamed FreeDOS, and 30 years and many contributions later, it stands as the last MS-DOS-compatible operating system still under active development.
[...] To mark FreeDOS' 20th anniversary in 2014, we talked with Hall and other FreeDOS maintainers about its continued relevance, the legacy of DOS, and the developers' since-abandoned plans to add ambitious modern features like multitasking and built-in networking support (we also tried, earnestly but with mixed success, to do a modern day's work using only FreeDOS).
[...] For the 30th anniversary, we've checked in with Hall again about how the last decade or so has treated the FreeDOS project, why it's still important, and how it continues to draw new users into the fold. We also talked, strange as it might seem, about what the future might hold for this inherently backward-looking operating system.
[...] "Compared to about 10 years ago, I'd say the interest level in FreeDOS is about the same," Hall told Ars in an email interview. "Our developer community has remained about the same over that time, I think. And judging by the emails that people send me to ask questions, or the new folks I see asking questions on our freedos-user or freedos-devel email lists, or the people talking about FreeDOS on the Facebook group and other forums, I'd say there are still about the same number of people who are participating in the FreeDOS community in some way."
[...] Though it's still being downloaded and used, shifts in PC hardware are making it more difficult to install and run FreeDOS directly on a new PC.
[...] One issue is the UEFI firmware used to boot modern PCs. UEFI began replacing the traditional PC BIOS at the tail end of the 2000s, and today, it's the default mechanism used for booting Windows, macOS, and Linux, though Windows and Linux both technically can still boot on non-UEFI systems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 02 2017, @07:15AM (2 children)
I member freeDos. Mainly being disappointed it wasn't MS-Dos. Back around windows 95 days.....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @12:24AM (1 child)
...and folks who had been forced to pay for MICROS~1'S half-assed DOS were disappointed that it wasn't DR-DOS.
For example, Redmond didn't have the CHOICE command until v6. [wikipedia.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @10:06AM
Apparently you can still buy DR-DOS licenses for $79. [drdos.com] However somehow I doubt they are selling many licenses, especially at that price point. ;-)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Nerdfest on Sunday July 02 2017, @02:12PM (3 children)
Whenever I need to run a BIOS update, it's a life saver (unless it's one of those "Windows-only" type of utilities).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @12:27AM (1 child)
Yup. Here, you want the OS to concentrate on the -one- task, do it right, and wait to be told to do something else.
those "Windows-only" type of utilities
If there is a time when a multitasking OS is more inappropriate, I can't think of it.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @08:01AM
Not even that.
You want the OS to get out of the way and not interfere with anything. Which DOS really does excel at. Probably the only time BIOS update software even uses DOS is to read the file containing the new BIOS code. Once that is read into RAM[1], the rest of the update process might as well have been started directly from the boot loader.
[1] Well, there was that one HP BIOS update that read the file containing the new BIOS while it was writing it, instead of reading it into RAM first. When it got a read error from the floppy drive half way through, the machine became unbootable. Which was positive in our case, since the only reason we were updating the BIOS was to satisfy level 1 support (did you try rebooting, updating the BIOS,...) before getting an RMA number to send it back for a replacement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @10:12AM
That certainly will end as UEFI takes over. Unless someone writes an UEFI bootloader emulating BIOS (is that actually possible?)