FreeDOS Turns 15 Years Old Today 124
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by
Soulskill
from the keeps-on-ticking dept.
from the keeps-on-ticking dept.
Jim Hall writes "The FreeDOS Project turns 15 years old today! PD-DOS (later, 'FreeDOS') was announced to the world on June 28 1994 as a free replacement for MS-DOS, which Microsoft had announced would go away the following year, with the next release of Windows. There's more history available at the FreeDOS 'About' page and my blog. Today, FreeDOS is used by people all around the world. You can find FreeDOS in many different places: emulators, playing old DOS games, business, ... even bundled with laptops and netbooks. FreeDOS is still under active development, and recently released a new version of its kernel. A 'FreeDOS 1.1' distribution is planned."
What's it good for? (Score:5, Insightful)
In other discussions I've actually seen people comment that an inability to apply BIOS updates is a big drawback for Linux ('cause the update applications they refer to are Windows based)
If you know about Linux, how the hell can you NOT know about FreeDOS?
Now, that said
Re:What's it good for? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm genuinely puzzled by the people who can't figure out what a DOS-compatible OS is good for. Don't you people ever need to apply BIOS updates? Or run hard drive diagnostic software?
That's a trivial application for an operating system. Where you'll find DOS-level OSes still being used is primarily in embedded systems of various sorts. DOS has a lot of advantages there, if you're running on Intel-compatible hardware. Lots of development tools and utilities, support for Flash-based devices, etc.
Re:In case anyone is puzzled as I was (Score:1, Insightful)
1. and 2. are easily taken care of by DOSBox. 3. is a valid point, but really only when you're talking about legacy DOS-based systems; otherwise, modern OSes are a better choice (and I've seen a surprising number of cash registers with Tux mascots on their screens, so Linux seems to be quite popular there).
Of course, there's a 4. - putting older computers (especially pre-80386 PCs) to good use.
From the DOSbox wiki :
"In theory, any MS-DOS or PC-DOS (referred to commonly as "DOS") application should run in DOSBox, but the emphasis has been on getting DOS games to run smoothly, which means that communication, networking and printer support are still in early development."
So no, for running serious legacy applications you'd be better off with FreeDOS as opposed to DOSbox.
Re:Start FreeWindows7 emulator now (Score:3, Insightful)
That's ridiculously silly...you're complaining that Microsoft partially broke compatibility with DOS -- an operating system from over 15 years ago? Come on, nobody is going to take your argument seriously if that's what it is (I guess that's why you were modded into Oblivion).
Show me one operating system that can run binaries from 15 years. Show me one operating system that can take source code from 15 years ago and compile it unmodified today.
I'm not sure you're going to find out, outside of possibly the big old unixes? Don't think FreeBSD can.
Given that windows CAN still run many dos programs out of the box (as of 32-bit vista) what more do you want? Mac OS can't run programs from about 7-8 years ago. Can linux run programs from 15 years ago? (we're talking before 1.0 kernel! a.out binaries! and I actually don't know if the latest linux release can run those old binaries or not...)
If you're talking source code compatibility, things have changed a lot too. .NET would be the single biggest change i guess, but the Win16 and win32 APIs are still around...
Re:What's it good for? (Score:1, Insightful)
> If you know about Linux, how the hell can you NOT know about FreeDOS?
It's pretty simple, really: Not everyone has used Windows.
Some are longtime Unix users; most are Mac users, interested in Linux, who simply never crossed over to the Dark Side.
Is everyone in your world white?
How several old PCs > fewer new PCs (Score:3, Insightful)
isn't there a point where running computers older than a certain age simply to get something out of them is counter-productive?
Most popular PC operating systems and popular PC applications do not support sharing a single PC between simultaneous users, each on one set of monitor, keyboard, and mouse. You need a separate PC per user. So even if the old PCs are old, they still might suffice to run a given app. Or are you talking about junking them and replacing them with new PCs? I read on, and apparently you are.
Would they (for example, if you were using it as a router) include Ethernet hardware that wasn't a bottleneck on a modern 10/100 or 10/1000 network?
If your connection to the Internet isn't more than 3 Mbps, why would you need more than 10 Mbps between the gigabit switch and the router PC?
how much electrical power will it require to keep running? Probably more than a small, inobtrusive modern device with the same functionality.
Unlike old PCs, a lot of "small, inobtrusive modern device[s]" use cryptography to lock out the use of any free software. Game consoles and digital video recorders are key examples of this.