{"id":243,"date":"2019-11-07T09:50:06","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T09:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hub.pfind.com\/?p=243"},"modified":"2025-05-12T08:45:21","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T12:45:21","slug":"freedos-free-and-open-source-dos-operating-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ebool.com\/hub\/freedos-free-and-open-source-dos-operating-system\/","title":{"rendered":"How FreeDOS Delivers Free and Open Source DOS-Compatible Operating System for the Modern Age"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Summary<\/strong>: Back in the days, MS-DOS was the king of the computer operating systems before Windows came around. At the time, many programs, games, and embedded systems were made for MS-DOS operating system. Fast forward to today, MS-DOS has become an obsolete OS. But, due to many programs and games that were released for it, many people still needed to use this OS just to run their old software and games. This is where FreeDOS comes around. It provides the open-source version of MS-DOS that is capable of running various programs and games that were released for the MS-DOS operating system.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Whether you are still\nplaying old classic DOS games or using old business programs that were only\nreleased on the MS-DOS operating system, it would be difficult for you to use\nsuch old and legacy software on the modern computers. Most of those programs won\u2019t\nhave compatibility with the modern Windows OS of today, which is Windows 10.\nThis is why finding another way to make these old programs to run in the modern\nWindows operating system is preferable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

FreeDOS is an open-source program that is quickly becoming the MS-DOS of today\u2019s modern age. Although it was started in 1994, many people didn\u2019t know about this program until recently. When modern computers no longer support MS-DOS, the replacement of this old OS is needed to run various old and legacy software on the modern computers. FreeDOS becomes the first choice because it offers full compatibility for all MS-DOS programs and games, which make it easier for anyone to have access to their legacy programs and games without having to buy old hardware or do some tweaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The usage of FreeDOS\nis pretty simple and straightforward. You just need to install it on your\ncurrent PC with the various installation options that are provided on the\nofficial website (http:\/\/www.freedos.org\/<\/a>). It is recommended to install FreeDOS on a\nvirtual machine environment as to avoid it from disrupting your current Windows\ninstallation. To learn more about FreeDOS and what it can do, we have\ninterviewed Jim Hall<\/strong>, Founder and\nProject Coordinator of The FreeDOS Project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Differences and Similarities Between FreeDOS and MS-DOS or DOS Family of Operating Systems<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Jim Hall is the Founder and Project Coordinator of The FreeDOS Project<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Since the creation of\nFreeDOS in 1994, the vision of Jim Hall was to create the open source version\nof the MS-DOS operating system. Thus, it is designed to be very similar with\nthe MS-DOS operating system when it comes to features and functionality. The\nbiggest difference is that FreeDOS is free and open source. It means that it is\nfree to use, and the users can even see the source code and make changes to it,\nwhereas MS-DOS is a commercial product with a proprietary license.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only designed to\nbe similar to MS-DOS in function and features, it is also designed to be\ncompletely compatible with any MS-DOS programs and games. So, you can run your\nold programs and games using FreeDOS on the modern computer without much\ntweaking, and you would see the similar performance as if it was run under the\noriginal MS-DOS operating system. Also, Jim added other extra features not available\nin the original MS-DOS operating system, such as developer tools, archiving\ntools, networking, and more. Jim Hall explained about the differences and\nsimilarities between FreeDOS and MS-DOS in detail,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI started FreeDOS in 1994 because I\nwanted to have a free \/ open source version of MS-DOS, so I could continue to\nrun my favorite DOS programs and games. So, from the beginning, FreeDOS was\ndesigned to be very similar to MS-DOS.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, like any DOS, FreeDOS is\n16-bit and runs one program at a time (it\u2019s not multitasking). Like classic\nDOS, FreeDOS still requires an Intel CPU and a BIOS. And because of all that,\npretty much any program or application or game that runs on MS-DOS will run on\nFreeDOS.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have a component of FreeDOS called\n\u201cBase\u201d that reproduces the functionality of the original MS-DOS. You\u2019ll find\nprograms like APPEND and ATTRIB and DEBUG and all of your classic DOS commands\nthere.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we\u2019ve also expanded FreeDOS to be\nmuch more than MS-DOS. We include lots of programs and functionality that\ndidn\u2019t exist in the original MS-DOS. FreeDOS includes archive tools (like Zip,\ncabextract, tar, and 7-Zip), developer tools (compilers, assemblers, and other\nprogramming languages like perl), editors, networking, and games.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We included a ton of extra utilities in\nFreeDOS 1.2. For example, people who use Linux will find FreeDOS 1.2 very\nfamiliar, with several Linux-like commands.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the biggest difference is that\nFreeDOS is open source software. Anyone can download our source code to see how\nit works or make changes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(About a year ago, Microsoft released\nthe MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0 source code on GitHub, which is a big deal. But these\nare very old versions of MS-DOS. As far as I know, Microsoft has not released\nthe source code to MS-DOS 6.22, the last version when MS-DOS was a standalone\nproduct.)\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Notable\nUsages and Applications of FreeDOS<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As an open source operating\nsystem mimicking MS-DOS, FreeDOS is mainly used by people to run old MS-DOS\ngames and software. Since some software that were available on MS-DOS might no\nlonger run properly under the modern Windows OS, FreeDOS is being used to\nrevive the old legacy software so that they can run on the modern PC. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, FreeDOS can\nbe used to run the embedded systems that were originally designed for MS-DOS as\nwell. As such, people can also create an embedded system using FreeDOS\noperating system. There are many usages of FreeDOS that many people find useful\nin today\u2019s modern age, despite of its seemingly old and simple OS. Someone has\neven built a pinball machine using FreeDOS as its embedded operating system.\nJim explained to us about the notable usages and applications of FreeDOS,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen people use FreeDOS in some\npretty neat applications over the years.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the coolest was someone built a\npinball machine using FreeDOS as the embedded operating system, to track score\nand run the board. I don\u2019t know exactly how they used FreeDOS to do this, but I\nimagine you could do it by having all the targets, bumpers, or whatever generate\nkeyboard events, and then you run a program on FreeDOS to read the keyboard. So\nmaybe the drop targets generated A,S,D,F and the bumpers generated QWER.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Developer\nCommunity Around the FreeDOS Project<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

FreeDOS is an\noperating system that undergoes continuous development since the project was\nstarted in 1994. In the early 2000s, the developers for this operating system\nwere numerous, but the number of people working on this project has been\ndecreasing ever since. However, FreeDOS still has the core developers that work\non this operating system on a regular basis. The founder, Jim Hall, communicates\nwith these core developers regularly via the developer-only mailing list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from maintaining\nthe regular communication with the developers, Jim also communicates regularly\nwith the users of the FreeDOS operating system via the user mailing list. This\nway, it is easier for him to stay connected with both the developers and the\nusers of this OS. Jim Hall explained to us about the development community\naround the FreeDOS project,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think we have a very welcoming\ndeveloper community. I\u2019ll admit the developer community is smaller now than we\nwere in the early 2000\u2019s, but we have a core group of developers who continue\nto work on FreeDOS.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We communicate mostly through an email\nlist. The developers are on the freedos-devel list, but we also look for user\ndiscussion and questions on the freedos-user email list. Email lists have\nworked well for us, and I find it\u2019s a good way to stay connected.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Typical\nApplications of FreeDOS Operating System<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The FreeDOS operating\nsystem is mainly used for three purposes. First, it is used to play old DOS\ngames that are no longer compatible with the modern PC. Second, it is used to\nrun the old programs that can no longer be installed on a modern PC, especially\nif someone needs to extract the data from such old programs. And third, it is\nused to run embedded systems, which were common back in the days. In the past,\nmany embedded systems used DOS as its main OS, whereas today, most embedded\nsystems run Linux OS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another additional use\nfor the FreeDOS operating system is that it can help people update the firmware\nfor their computer BIOS, since most firmware updates are run on the MS-DOS\noperating system. However, it can only be used for older PC hardware that still\nuses MS-DOS for their BIOS, as modern PCs of today usually use the newer UEFI\ntechnology. Jim Hall explained to us in detail about the typical applications\nof the FreeDOS operating system,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe ran a survey a few years ago to\nlearn how people used FreeDOS, and most people used FreeDOS to do three things:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(1) Play classic DOS games.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of the old DOS games are really\nfun to play! And truly fun games have a long shelf life. (Just because a game\nis old doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not fun to play!)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sometimes like to play the classic\nDoom game. And last year, I bought a copy of the TIE Fighter DOS game so I\ncould play it again. It\u2019s very low resolution compared to more modern games,\nbut TIE Fighter is probably my favorite DOS game.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(2) Run legacy programs.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I get email about this every few months.\nFor example, a company suddenly needed to access the data from an old DOS\napplication from the 1990s. Someone in the company\u2019s IT department installed\nFreeDOS on a spare PC, installed the old DOS application, and exported the\ndata.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That example is very similar to\nsomething I experienced first-hand. I served as campus CIO in higher ed for 5+\nyears. A faculty member came to us and asked if we could read some research\ndata from some old floppies. The data on the floppies were written by an old\nprogram, and the researcher couldn\u2019t read the data using other programs like\nExcel. We installed FreeDOS on one of our spare PCs, found a copy of the\noriginal DOS program, and ran that on FreeDOS. We were able to read the old\nfloppies and write the data into text files that the researcher could use.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(3) Develop embedded systems.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t see very many DOS embedded\nsystems these days. I think most newer embedded systems are now running Linux.\nBut sometimes we find someone who has DOS-based embedded systems, and FreeDOS\ncan run on that too.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think you could add a fourth example\nhere: installing BIOS updates on your computer. The BIOS is the core of many\nPCs and is actually what the computer uses to boot an operating system like\nWindows. Some PC makers release the BIOS firmware updates in the form of a DOS\nprogram. But you need to run DOS to update the BIOS, so people use FreeDOS for\nthat.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But these days, newer computers aren\u2019t running BIOS, but UEFI, which doesn\u2019t require a DOS program to install firmware updates.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Bolitaire Game in FreeDOS<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The\nEvolution of FreeDOS Throughout the Years<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

FreeDOS was started as\na project that attempted to create a kind of clone to MS-DOS at the time. At the\ntime, it was named the PD-DOS, which stands for Public Domain DOS, but Jim\nquickly renamed it to Free-DOS before the hyphen was finally removed. After\ngathering the developers to work on this project via the initial announcement on\nJune 29, 1994, this operating system is slowly evolving into a better version\nof MS-DOS. It has features that MS-DOS doesn\u2019t have, and it is always open for\nimprovements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the time, the\ndevelopers for this project added various types of features and utilities to\nmake FreeDOS even more useful and relevant to today\u2019s modern computing needs. This\nis how this open source operating system is evolving throughout the years. Jim\nHall explained about how FreeDOS has evolved after the initial announcement for\nthis project in 1994,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI first announced the project that\nwould become FreeDOS in 1994. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I originally named the project \u201cPD-DOS\u201d\nfor \u201cPublic Domain DOS\u201d but we quickly renamed the project to \u201cFree-DOS\u201d when\nwe realized we wanted to use the GNU General Public License, which was Free\nsoftware, not Public Domain software. We later dropped the hyphen for\n\u201cFreeDOS.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Originally, I wanted FreeDOS to be a\nclone or workalike to the original MS-DOS. I didn\u2019t have very lofty goals. I\njust wanted to have a free, open source version of DOS that we could call our\nown.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as I and others started to build\nFreeDOS, we quickly started to create something that was even better than\nMS-DOS. The original MS-DOS had a feature called PRINT that managed your\nprinting, usually to a dot-matrix printer. I looked around for an open source\nreplacement for that and discovered an even more powerful utility. SPOOL was\nlike PRINT, but better. Until then, when you printed something, you had to wait\nuntil the whole document finished printing before you could print something\nelse. But SPOOL would run in the background, almost like multitasking. You\ncould print something with SPOOL, and immediately get back to work. So now we\nhad a feature in FreeDOS that was even better than MS-DOS.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that, I started to think about how\nFreeDOS could be a better DOS than MS-DOS. That\u2019s why we started to include\nsuch a variety of utilities, to make the FreeDOS command line more useful.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And from the start, we\u2019ve included\ncompilers and assemblers. This is an important part of an open source software\nproject like FreeDOS. It\u2019s much easier for people to contribute to FreeDOS if\nwe include tools they can use to write new programs, add new features, or fix\nbugs.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Future\nPlans for FreeDOS Operating System<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

FreeDOS has been undergoing constant development throughout the years, and the future of this open-source OS is bright. In the near future, the developers of this project will release the version 1.3 of FreeDOS, providing various types of improvements that still follow the core concepts of this operating system. The focus for this update is the compatibility with the DOS programs. More support will be added to both old and new hardware to make it run better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Foxcalc calculator <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Also, the developers\nare working on the new DOS kernel for FreeDOS, which is still under\ndevelopment. When the new kernel is completed and finally integrated with the\ncurrent source code, the FreeDOS 2.0 will be released. This new kernel will\nallow the addition of new features, such as 64-bit support, support for more\ndrivers, multitasking capability, and much more. Concluding our interview, Jim\nHall shared with us about his plans for the future of FreeDOS,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are already planning the next\nrelease of FreeDOS. It\u2019s been delayed, but we\u2019re still working on it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We decided the next version of FreeDOS\nwouldn\u2019t make any dramatic changes, so the next version is FreeDOS 1.3 instead\nof FreeDOS 2.0.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

FreeDOS 1.3 retains the core assumptions\nthat make FreeDOS a classic DOS:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compatibility is key.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

FreeDOS 1.3 will remain 16-bit.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

FreeDOS 1.3 will retain focus on a\nsingle-user command-line environment.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

FreeDOS 1.3 will continue to run on old\nPCs (XT, ‘286, ‘386, etc.) but will support new hardware with expanded driver\nsupport, where possible.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The “Base” package group will\ncontain everything that replicates the functionality from MS-DOS.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we plan FreeDOS 1.3, we are looking\nclosely at the packages that we include. We have rearranged some packages into\nother groups, such as a separate group that has all the Linux-like programs.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are also keeping an eye to what a\nfuture FreeDOS 2.0 might look like. For example, a group of enterprising\ndevelopers are working on a new DOS kernel. This new kernel has some big goals\nsuch as 64-bit support, multitasking, and a more modern internal architecture. But\nwriting a DOS kernel is not easy – and especially a DOS kernel like they are\nplanning. So, it will be a while before we see a working version of this\nkernel. But when they get it working, that\u2019s probably when we\u2019ll make a FreeDOS\n2.0.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jim\nHall<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

jhall@freedos.org<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Founder, and Project Coordinator\n(equivalent to Executive Director)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The FreeDOS Project<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: Back in the days, MS-DOS was the king of the computer operating systems before Windows came around. At the time, many programs, games,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":248,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"yoast_head":"\nHow FreeDOS Delivers Free and Open Source DOS-Compatible Operating System for the Modern Age - eBoolHub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ebool.com\/hub\/freedos-free-and-open-source-dos-operating-system\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How FreeDOS Delivers Free and Open Source DOS-Compatible Operating System for the Modern Age - eBoolHub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Summary: Back in the days, MS-DOS was the king of the computer operating systems before Windows came around. 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