We're used to updating Windows, macOS, and Linux systems at least once a month (and usually more), but people with ancient DOS-based PCs still get to join in the fun every once in a while. Over the weekend, the team that maintains FreeDOS officially released version 1.4 of the operating system, containing a list of fixes and updates that have been in the works since the last time a stable update was released in 2022.
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The release has "a focus on stability" and includes an updated installer, new versions of common tools like fdisk, and format and the edlin text editor.
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Hall talked with Ars about several of these changes when we interviewed him about FreeDOS in 2024. The team issued the first release candidate for FreeDOS 1.4 back in January.
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The standard install image includes all the files and utilities you need for a working FreeDOS install, and a separate "BonusCD" download is also available for those who want development tools, the OpenGEM graphical interface, and other tools.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by pTamok on Wednesday April 09, @09:49PM (7 children)
Some computer manufacturers offer other choices of operating system than Microsoft Windows if you purchase a computer from them. Many of those offer FreeDOS.
I believe the reason is a licensing foible - https://lwn.net/Articles/694818/ [lwn.net]
Also, some manufacturers use FreeDOS as a boot environment for flashing firmware/BIOS.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday April 10, @12:23AM (6 children)
Wow, ancient times. I think I had Mandrake in maybe 2002, 2003? But this reminds me that maybe there's a chance I can run my old 8 bit DOS games!
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Thursday April 10, @01:25AM (3 children)
Your old DOS games are 16-bit.
Yes, that's what FreeDOS is good for. For your more ancient 8-bit games, you need an emulator running in that.
What irritates me the most, young people today often confuse FreeDOS with FreeBSD.
Once they see the Unix console, they cry loud "Do not want that DOS!"
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 4, Funny) by jb on Thursday April 10, @03:04AM (1 child)
Yes, you can tell they're young from the faulty grammar. Surely it should be "Do not want those DOS!".
After all, "dos" is plural (just ask any Spaniard).
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Thursday April 10, @06:46AM
That depends: I would order a Dos Equis [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by turgid on Thursday April 10, @11:49AM
Once they see the Unix console, they cry loud "Do not want that DOS!"
Yes, and even from people who should know better. When I worked at the nuclear power station, not in IT I hasten to add, I used to help out the IT department with their non-DOS/Windows systems. None of them had any experience outside of the Microsoft world.
I was asked to look at a PC that was having trouble with its modem. They had no idea what it was running. It had a login prompt. I typed in "root" and it let me in straight away. It turned out it was running QNX. "He's going into DOS..." The problem with the modem was that it had come from Germany and was incompatible with the UK analogue phone system.
The next thing I was asked to look at were these cool looking workstations in a special room. I'd never seen them before. They were the Emergency Plume Gamma Monitoring System. They were running X and CDE. IT needed to get their IP addresses. I fired up a shell and typed in a command. "He's going into DOS..." It came back "DCL command verb not recognised." Aha! VMS! I had played around with a VAX cluster a few years before and remembered that it had a wonderful command line help system. I soon found the command to tell me the IP address.
I was revered as some kind of weird genius. All I had done was cared to look outside the Microsoft prison from time to time. I was playing with Linux at home, recompiling my kernel of an evening. I asked if I could install Linux at work. The request went offsite to headquarters. The reply soon came, "No because Linux is shareware and shareware has viruses." I still installed it on my PC in the spare partition next to MS DOS and the Linux version of WordPerfect. It was far more reliable for editing the documents than Windows 3.1 and WordPerfect for DOS.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by epitaxial on Thursday April 10, @03:12AM (1 child)
86box works great for that. It emulates actual hardware using the firmware files. Pick any combination of hardware from an 8088 to a pentium II.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday April 10, @03:21PM
Also, if you use 86Manager, there's a pretty big set of preconfigured defaults. Want a classic Tandy 1000sx? Just select it from a dropdown. Back in the day I think people modified their systems a lot more; my 1000sx had a 3.5 720K floppy and 86Box does not seem to offer exactly the same "Tandy Smartwatch" RTC that probably most 1000sx had installed (it was basically a dallas semiconductor memory/RTC/battery in a fat DIP). And it won't let me configure an 8-bit VGA which was contemporary; I don't think I ever used onboard Tandy video although I heard it was pretty good (basically CGA with extra colors, needing extra ram of course). Another bug is 86Manager defaults to non-turbo 4.77 mhz whereas the physical hardware defaults to 7.16 and IIRC there was no way to slow it down to original PC speed. Out of the box the 86Manager has a minor bug it doesn't automatically enable Tandy Sound, which was pretty good back in the day.
My complaints about one specific machine aside, 86Manager is pretty cool.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by aim on Thursday April 10, @08:46AM (2 children)
Back in 2014 when I bought a solid 17" laptop, I didn't want to shell out money to MicroSoft, as I'd install GNU/Linux anyway. The german product I chose had the Windows-less option with FreeDOS, so that's what I took... and was surprised to have OpenGEM along with it - GEM I knew from Atari ST times.
Out of curiosity, I didn't just flatten that right away but did try it, and man, that thing just flew. No Windows or Linux installation I've since seen even came close to the speed of interaction to be had with that combination. The stuff I use though won't run on DOS, so...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Thursday April 10, @11:54AM (1 child)
MS-DOS does not use protected mode or virtual memory and it is single-tasking. That's why it's so much faster. It's doing far less and it's far less reliable. In the olden days, it used to crash left, right and centre. You'd be rebooting all day long. I still have the nervous twitch of saving my source code after changing every single line.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Funny) by EEMac on Thursday April 10, @04:08PM
> I still have the nervous twitch of saving my source code after changing every single line.
You have that too? I have that from my MacOS 8.1-8.6 days.
(Score: 2, Informative) by suxen on Thursday April 10, @09:01AM (3 children)
Full USB download being almost 700MB is wild. My first PC was an XT running DOS with a whopping 21MB hard drive. After using it for many years disk usage was probably at about third of the total and that included several shells, productivity software (including a consumer grade database system that supported natural language queries that was easy enough to use that 10yo me could figure it out) and plenty of games
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 10, @11:20AM (2 children)
Humans take on 100g/yr give or take. Computers take on 20Mb/yr give or take.
Both should be seen as a minimum.
It's a law of nature. Get over it.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 10, @02:20PM (1 child)
Humans take on 100g/yr give or take.
Seems low, at least for people in "weight gain mode"? 1 Kg in 10 years is a lot lower that what I'm familiar with. In my case it started at age 30, before that I must have been a ball of nervous energy, had make sure that I ate enough to maintain weight.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 10, @03:32PM
They put me on antidepressants in my early twenties. I put on 20kg that I have never shifted.