The FreeDOS Project has recently released pre2 of its Beta 9 series. This is the base disk set only.
FreeDOS Beta 9 pre2 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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How does it compare to the othe DOSen, like PC-DOS or MS-DOS or DR-DOS? Is it “faster?” I dunno how you could tell on anything remotely modern, but hey – that would be nice. I understand DOS is still extensively used in the embedded world, to what extent anymore?
Well you can have multitasking in dos. Isn’t that good for old chap?
DOS is definitely needed by some. I believe it’s built into some ASUS motherboards for BIOS restoration (or is it downloadable?), and they specifically use FreeDOS, since Microsoft no longer supports or offers MS-DOS.
It’s also still useful for running older application that still work well, instead of having that application updated to a newer platform. Plus for historical value, wouldn’t it be nice to show some students of computer fields some of the stuff before Windows. Might be easier to show them through modern DOS clones instead of trying to find unlicensed copies of MS-DOS, DR-DOS, etc.
freedos is great for collecting and running old screensavers. how many versions of dazzle are there?
When I wanted to run Wordperfect 5.1 for DOS under DOSEMU on Linux I tried using FreeDOS (I forget the version). It would not execute the compressed WP5.1 binaries. So I had to install DR-DOS 7 (I actually have a licence for it would you believe! it came with a old copy of Caldera Linux 2.1, I got included in a SAMS book) which was able to run the compressed binaries.
Does anyone know if the new version of FreeDOS will run compressed binaries like those for WP5.1. I would like to remove anything associated with SCO from my hard drive (though I believe SCO has now sold DR-DOS).
I have a page of links to various DOS versions and fully graphical GUI’s at:
http://pcgem.iwarp.com
I make no money from this site; it’s just where I put all the stuff I wish I had when I needed it.
Or how about FreeOS/2?
Just what we need for that Free 286
The one thing that I really *HATE* about FreeDOS (and it irks me grately that ReactOS has incorporated it) is the command.com implementation. It *really* sucks. it’s slow, buggy, it crashes and it doesn’t do pipes correctly.
It is not true that M$ does not offer DOS anymore. Problem is that MS-DOS is not free. At least in Latvia, it is cheaper to buy OEM MS-DOS 6.22 and then upgrade to Win, than to buy Win alone.
The FreeDOS command.com, FreeCOM, does not seem slow
nor pipe-broken to me. It swaps into XMS so it only
takes 3k of low memory while you run other programs.
Of course it has tab-completion, although only in the
current directory, not the whole path. Maybe you can
specify in more detail what is wrong.
By the way, FreeDOS can do LBA and FAT32, probably two
of the cooler features. It has clones of most MS utils,
but also has extra commands. Less positive: The EMM386
is far from perfect, as is BW Basic. For more information,
check the 1.0 TODO list on http://www.freedos.org! Your can help
to improve FreeDOS, all parts are open source :-).