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Operating Systems

FreeDOS Puts Out New Release (theregister.com) 43

Posted by msmash from the DOS-ain't-dead dept.
joshuark writes: FreeDOS has put out release 1.3, the latest release in 6-years. Some of the improvements since the 1.2 release, include: new FreeCOM 0.85a, new Kernel 2043 and an 8086 version with FAT32 support, floppy edition now uses compression...let's party like it's 1994.

More specifics can be found at the SourceForge project page.
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FreeDOS Puts Out New Release More

FreeDOS Puts Out New Release

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  • Caldera? That is a name I've not heard in a long.. (Score:3)

    by ink ( 4325 ) on Thursday February 24, 2022 @12:11PM (#62299405) Homepage

    Digital Research's DR-DOS was bought by Novell, sold off to Caldera, and ended up an important exhibit in the Department of Justice's monopoly case against Microsoft in the 1990s

    Wow. I'm old.

    • Re:Caldera? That is a name I've not heard in a lon (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Thursday February 24, 2022 @12:33PM (#62299527)

      raise your hand if you implemented and supported 10-Base-2 networks or Arcnet!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rhipf ( 525263 )

        Raises hand for 10-Base-2 networking.

        Oops forgot to terminate that last computer. No wonder the network isn't working properly.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ink ( 4325 )

          Hah, yeah -- I remember the first PC lab when I was in university which had 10 base 2. Worst design ever. Although the alternative was to use the campus IPX netware crap. Fortunately, we had some UNIX rebels whic

        • A TDR was a great tool for estimating how far away the break was.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by PCM2 ( 4486 )

          Better yet: "Somebody kicked the network cable underneath their desk and now the whole LAN is down. Who was it? Everybody check under your desk."

      • Woohoo! Loved tracking down the person that kicked the cable under their desk taking the entire Novell 286 2.11 network down. Also helped sysop a BBS back in the early 90s that used Arcnet. Oh my, that was a long time ago.

        • I worked for an aerospace company that moved people around constantly. Why? because it was a profit center on gov't contracts; cost-plus ya know. They'd just indiscriminately cut any wires they didn't recognize when reorganizing cubicles. I used to have 3 crews who had to go out into the office buildings on-plant, daily just to fix cable cuts and people tying on to the network via over-extension and putting the cables on the wrong connectors. #obsoletetech

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Revek ( 133289 )
        Ah those were the day. Last year I found a terminator while going though an old bag in storage.

      • I remember fondly installing Novell Netware 2.15 from 40 5 1/4" diskettes.

        The diskettes had to be copied first, it wouldn't install from originals for some reason.

        Obviously there was always a bad copy among the 40.

      • Remember, I still have an ISA 3COM 3C509 and BNC connectors laying around my house somewhere. None of my machines have ISA slots, I have no cable, but just can't bring myself to throw it away.

        • much like my VAX/VMS Internals and Data Structures book, I can't bring myself to throw it out.

      • raise your hand if you implemented and supported 10-Base-2 networks or Arcnet!

        Just my home network (10-Base-2) with 2 computers.

      • raise your hand if you implemented and supported 10-Base-2 networks or Arcnet!

        I might have the card my 486DX used to connect to our 10-base-2 home network in college days. There is a scary box in the garage that just gets moved from one home to the next and never opened. It might be in there. Should have an ATI Mach 64 (32?) and SoundBlaster 16 too. Hmm ... did I have the Adapter SCSI then or did that come later?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by abmw ( 2668449 )
        Deterministic, token access controller protocols...yeah!!!!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jmccue ( 834797 )

      Yes, and DR DOS upgrade from Novel caused me lots of issues :(

      I went back to DR DOS 6 and all was fine. DR DOS 6 was a very nice system, it even had a rudimentary method of password protecting some files, preventing other people from reading the file. It was easy to get around, but a nice first step.

      Congratulations to the FreeDOS people, I was given an old (P2 or P1) that will be nice to setup with FreeDOS. I have not looked at that system yet, so wish me luck :).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jim Hall ( 2985 )

        Congratulations to the FreeDOS people, I was given an old (P2 or P1) that will be nice to setup with FreeDOS. I have not looked at that system yet, so wish me luck :)

        Thanks! And thanks for trying the new FreeDOS 1.3. It should work fine on a Pentium or Pentium-2. That's basicalliy how I have my virtual machine set up for emulation. :-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Caldera then became Santa Cruz Operation and then promptly sued IBM for copyrighted Unix code in Linux. Remember that?

      That's what happened to Caldera.

      (The original SCO became Tarantella, was acquired by Sun, then acquired by yes, Oracle)

      • Caldera then became Santa Cruz Operation and then promptly sued IBM for copyrighted Unix code in Linux. Remember that?

        That's what happened to Caldera.

        (The original SCO became Tarantella, was acquired by Sun, then acquired by yes, Oracle)

        Not quite. Caldera renamed itself to The SCO Group, they were never The Santa Cruz Operation and didn't own the rights to the name. The SCO Group sued a number of companies including Novell. No real wins.

        One of their claims (which failed) was that they couldn't buy and operate the Unix business without the copyrights. This "belief" didn't stop them from SELLING the Unix business without the copyrights once they lost in court.

        The case VS IBM has only recently ended (late last year). But...

        Most recentl

  • Remember FreeDOWS and Reece stamping his foot when he didn't get his way, basically destroying the project.

  • Hah (Score:3)

    by pele ( 151312 ) on Thursday February 24, 2022 @12:22PM (#62299455) Homepage

    Sourceforge is still a thing?

    • FreeDOS might outlive SourceForge.

      I still have a t-shirt I picked up from a SourceForge booth at a convention some 20 years ago. Luckily I'm not part of the Linux t-shirt size statistic. [external-preview.redd.it]

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Jim Hall ( 2985 )

        Yup, we still have some things on SourceForge. Our website is hosted elsewhere, but SourceForge still hosts our email lists and wiki, for example.

    • Yeah, thank God !

      Not everyone likes github. Personally I hate git. It's far too complicated for me, subversion does absolutely everything I need and I don't have to look up the command every time I do anything more complicated than a commit/push.

    • Sourceforge is still a thing?

      Haha, a DOS project is still using SVN in 2022.

  • That's huge... (Score:5, Funny)

    by NFN_NLN ( 633283 ) on Thursday February 24, 2022 @12:24PM (#62299471)

    ... about 275MB for a "Full installation including applications and games."

    But my PC only has a 40MB MFM HDD!!!

    • switch to RLL and reformat, you'll get almost 50% more space.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        but you'll lose your data if you look at the computer cross-eyed

        • then store your ASCII cat art on floppies then instead of the hard drive! Also clean up any unused Leisure Suit Larry games you have on it.

        • Na- RLL works great as long as you've got the drive in a stabilized faraday cage.

          • Hey! don't blame RLL for the fact that you've got a crappy 40MB drive with gummed-up roller bearings and you dropped it three times putting in the computer in the first place!

    • Re:That's huge... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jim Hall ( 2985 ) on Thursday February 24, 2022 @02:11PM (#62299959) Homepage

      It is a big install if you install everything. It's much smaller (about 20MB) if you install just a "plain DOS" system. You can make it even smaller if you do a custom install (boot the LiveCD and do a manual install .. or run SETUP ADV from the LiveCD for a custom install) on small systems. We also have a floppy-only version that is very small, and appropriate for low-end systems like '286 computers and other classic systems.

      • {millennial mode} what's a CD...?

        Thank you FreeDOS, you've saved me a few times when I had to install/upgrade a BIOS.

    • FreeDOS ain't done 'till Lotus won't run.

  • There's a major overhaul of the UX: After more than 40 years, the "C:>" prompt is being replaced by ANSI art graphical links to personalized features and sponsored content.

  • New features (Score:4, Informative)

    by Jim Hall ( 2985 ) on Thursday February 24, 2022 @02:07PM (#62299941) Homepage

    The news summary might have included more of the announcement to share what's new here:

    This contains a bunch of great new features and improvements since the 1.2 release, including: new FreeCOM 0.85a, new Kernel 2043 and an 8086 version with FAT32 support, floppy edition now uses compression and requires about half as many diskettes, the return of networking, some new programs and games, many many many package updates, some updates and improvements to NLS, improved install process, especially with the MBR, some support to automatically set the COUNTRY.SYS information, improved CD initialization for the boot media and installed system, .. and much, much more!

    And:

    Check the Readme for more details. You'll need 20MB to install a "Plain DOS system," or about 275MB for a "Full installation including applications and games." You can find other optional packages on the BonusCD. For a list of everything included in FreeDOS 1.3, including what's installed and what's available to install, read the release report file.

    There have been a ton of package updates here, as expected. The FreeDOS 1.3 release also has a bunch of translation and internationalization improvements. The package descriptions in the installer are also much improved.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bbn ( 172659 )

      My IBM model 30 only had 20 MB HDD and what is that 275 MB nonsense? Impossible!

  • From TFA:

    It comes with its own full-screen text editor, but also Emacs and Vim.

    Half expected Emacs to come with FreeDOS ... :-)
    (Either way, two OSes are better than one.)

    [Said as someone who's used Emacs since the 80s.]

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