▷ What is freedos and what is it for

FreeDOS is a free operating system for compatible computers that is intended to provide a complete, DOS compatible environment to run legacy software and support embedded systems. FreeDOS can be started from a floppy disk or USB flash drive. It is also designed to work well under virtualization or x86 emulation.

Unlike MS-DOS, FreeDOS is made up of free and open source software, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, therefore, its base distribution does not require license rights or royalties, and creation of custom distributions is permitted. However, other packages that are part of the FreeDOS project include non-GPL software such as 4DOS, which is distributed under a modified MIT license.

Index of contents

What is FreeDOS operating system and its main features

The FreeDOS project began on June 29, 1994, after Microsoft announced that it would no longer sell or support MS-DOS. Jim Hall, who was a student at the time, published a manifesto proposing the development of an open source replacement. Within a few weeks, other programmers like Pat Villani and Tim Norman joined the project. A kernel, the command line interpreter, and the core utilities were created by bundling the code they had written or found available. There have been many official pre-release distributions of FreeDOS prior to the final FreeDOS 1.0 release.

FreeDOS 1.2, released in November 2016, is available for download as a CD-ROM image: a limited installation disc containing only the core and basic applications, and a full disc containing many more applications (games, networks, development, etc.). The following table summarizes the different versions of FreeDOS.

Version	Status	Name	Date
0.01	ALPHA	None	September 16, 1994
0.02	ALPHA	None	December 1994
0.03	ALPHA	None	January 1995
0.04	ALPHA	None	June 1995
0.05	ALPHA	None	10 August 1996
0.06	ALPHA	None	November 1997
0.1	BETA	Orlando	March 25, 1998
0.2	BETA	Marvin	28 October 1998
0.3	BETA	Fortune	April 21, 1999
0.4	BETA	Lemur	April 9, 2000
0.5	BETA	Lara	10 August 2000
0.6	BETA	Midnite	March 18, 2001
0.7	BETA	Spears	7 September 2001
0.8	BETA	Nikita	April 7, 2002
0.9	BETA	None	28 September 2004
1.0	FINAL	None	3 September 2006
1.1	FINAL	None	2 January 2012
1.2	FINAL	None	25 December 2016

Uses of FreeDOS

Dell preloads FreeDOS with its N-series desktops to lower its cost. The company has come under fire for selling these machines no cheaper, and harder to buy, than identical Windows systems. HP provided FreeDOS as an option on its dc5750 desktop computers, Mini 5101 netbooks, and Probook notebooks. FreeDOS is also used as a bootable media to update BIOS firmware on HP systems.

FreeDOS is also used in multiple independent projects:

• FED-UP is the universal DivX Enhanced DivX player. FUZOMA is a FreeDOS based distribution that can boot from a floppy disk and turns old computers into educational tools for children. XFDOS is a FreeDOS based distribution with a GUI, Nano-X portability and FLTK.

FreeDOS compatibility

FreeDOS requires a PC with at least 640kB of memory. Programs not included with FreeDOS often require additional system resources. FreeDOS is mainly MS-DOS compatible. Supports COM executables, DOS standard executables, and Borland 16-bit DPMI executables. It is also possible to run 32-bit DPMI executables using DOS extenders. The operating system has several improvements over MS-DOS, mainly with support for newer standards and technologies that did not exist when Microsoft ended support for MS-DOS, such as internationalization or advanced power management TSRs. Also, with the use of HX DOS Extender, many Win32 console applications work correctly in FreeDOS, just like some rare GUI programs like QEMM and Bochs.

FreeDOS can run Microsoft Windows versions 1.0 and 2.0. Versions of Windows 3.x, which had support for i386 processors, cannot run entirely in 386 Enhanced Mode, except partially in the FreeDOS experimental 2037 kernel. The problems with running Windows are the result of Microsoft's efforts to prevent its products from running on non-Microsoft DOS implementations. Windows 95, 98 and ME use a simplified version of MS-DOS. FreeDOS cannot be used as a replacement due to undocumented interfaces between MS-DOS 7.0-8.0 and Windows 4.xx not emulated by FreeDOS; however, it can be installed and used alongside these systems using a boot manager program, such as BOOTMGR or METAKERN included with FreeDOS.

Windows NT and ReactOS

Windows NT-based operating systems, including Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and 7 for desktop computers, and Windows Server 2003, 2008, and 2008 R2 for servers, do not make use of MS-DOS as the core component of the system. These systems can make use of the FAT file systems, which are used by MS-DOS and earlier versions of Windows; however, they typically use NTFS (New Technology File System) by default for security and other reasons. FreeDOS can coexist on these systems in a separate partition or in the same partition on FAT systems. The FreeDOS kernel can be started by adding it to the Windows 2000 or XP Windows Boot Loader configuration file, boot.ini, or the equivalent of freeldr.ini for ReactOS.

FAT32 is fully supported and is the preferred format for the boot drive. Depending on the BIOS used, up to four LBA (Logical Block Addressing) hard drives up to 128GB or 2TB in size are supported. There has been little testing with large disks, and some BIOSes support LBA but fail on disks larger than 32GB; a driver like OnTrack or EZ-Drive solves this problem. There is no planned support for NTFS, ext2, or exFAT, but there are several third-party external drivers available for that purpose. To access ext2fs, LTOOLS can sometimes be used to copy data to and from ext2fs disks.

In short, it is a free alternative that can be installed on laptops to lower its price between 100 to 150 euros. A good option to install Windows 10 and get a low cost license or a Linux operating system. This ends our article on FreeDOS, remember that you can leave a comment if you have any suggestions. What do you think about Freedos? Do you use it or see it as a patch by manufacturers on their pre-assembled laptops or PCs?