FreeDOS Celebrates More Than 30 Years of Command Prompts With New Release

When Microsoft announced it would stop developing MS-DOS after 1995, college student Jim Hall "packaged my own extended DOS utilities, as did others," according to the web site for the resulting "FreeDOS" project.

Jim Hall is also Slashdot reader #2,985, and more than 30 years later he's "keeping the dream of the command prompt alive," writes Ars Technica. In a new article they note that last week the FreeDOS team released version 1.4, the first new stable update since 2022: 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. The release also includes updated HTML Help files... As with older versions, the FreeDOS installer is available in multiple formats based on the kind of system you're installing it on. For any "modern" PC (where "modern" covers anything that's shipped since the turn of the millennium), ISO and USB installers are available for creating bootable CDs, DVDs, or USB drives. FreeDOS is also available for vintage systems as a completely separate "Floppy-Only Edition" that fits on 720KB, 1.44MB, or 1.2MB 5.25 and 3.5-inch floppy disks.
Jim Hall composed a detailed introduction to FreeDOS 1.4 here.

He also answered questions from Slashdot's readers back in 2000 and again in 2019.

Doom

[dbialac]

But will it, like legacy versions of DOS, run Doom?

Re: Doom

[vbdasc]

Yes, it will. Few DOS games won't run under FreeDOS.

Re: Doom

[dbialac]

So it passes the Doom test. Good.

Bourne Shell has entered the chat

[v1]

IIRC this one dates back to the mid-70s? So so it's more like 50 years old.

Re:

[YetanotherUID]

And CP/M, which DOS is based on, goes back to 1974.

Which is besides the point anyway if you are not being a disingenous git, because just reading TFS makes it clear that the "30 years" comment refers not to command prompts in general, but to the length of the FreeDOS project

Re: Bourne Shell has entered the chat

[vbdasc]

Most timesharing systems of the 1960s had some sorts of command shell. For example, CTSS had one in 1961.

Re:

[v1]

bourne certainly isn't the OLDEST, but it's definitely the oldest one still in widespread use.

MSDOS 6.22

[backslashdot]

How close to full MSDOS 6.22 compatibility is it?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

How close to full MSDOS 6.22 compatibility is it?

I chuckled with the fantasy implication that ol' Billy Gates was after you for stealing an MSDOS 6.22 license, with you on the (code) run in search of a more free and legal alternative.

For a minute there, I thought Ellison had a potential contender for Earths biggest licensed asshole. Swear to SCO, that man could charge himself to take a shit because it smells like IP theft.

Re:

[backslashdot]

Yeah the Software Publishers Association (SPA) filed a fraudulent Interpol Red Notice against me back in 1994 for exactly that. Ever since then I've had to be on the run, right now I'm typing this from Belize. The last time I was here they sent John McAfee to murder me, but he got the wrong guy.

Re:

[Insanity Defense]

Has FreeDOS cloned doublespace/drive space yet? Maybe Stacker?

Re: MSDOS 6.22

[vbdasc]

Should FreeDOS clone every bundled third party feature in MSDOS/PCDOS 6.x like DoubleSpace/Superstor/Stacker, Scandisk, MS Antivirus and whatnot? I think no. These are not part of the core DOS. They were licensed from other vendors.

FreeDOS supports the disk compression hooks, so if you own Stacker, you can install it.

Re: MSDOS 6.22

[vbdasc]

Not yet complete. If you want to run Windows 3.1x, you may be out of luck.

Microsoft shenanigans binding Windows 3.1x to MSDOS/PCDOS' undocumented features are hard to defeat.

Re: it's not

[vbdasc]

If getting the spurious AARD errors is called "working", then yes.

Re:

[wildstoo]

Incorrect. As of a few years ago you can run Windows 3.11 [github.io] (but not WfW, yet).

FreeDOS' compatibility is still improving and it's quite impressive how compatible it is with the vast majority of DOS games and apps.

Re:

[Tablizer]

Being 100% compatible with MS requires matching the behavior of bugs and undocumented oddities in their decades of built-up cruft. This applies to MS-Office compatibility also.

not a bug issue

[Anonymous Coward]

MS-DOS (with few exceptions, e.g. version 4.00) was largely bug-free. The issue was that the internal data structures and behaviors of MS-DOS were relied on by programs (there were literally books written with titles like "UNDOCUMENTED DOS") -- and the reason for that was, if you wanted to write a TSR for example you had to know when it was safe to call into MS-DOS which was not designed to be re-entrant. Windows was basically the mother of all TSRs and had to intimately know the status of what was happenin

The command prompt?

[vbdasc]

It's quite alive and well on my Linux installs.