FreeDOS

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FreeDOS
The FreeDOS logo

FreeDOS booting screen shot
Company / developer Jim Hall & The FreeDOS team
OS family DOS
Working state Current
Source model Free software/open source[1]
Latest stable release 1.0 / 03 September 2006; 858 days ago
Available language(s) English
Supported platforms x86
Kernel type Monolithic kernel[2]
Default user interface DOS Command line interface
License GNU General Public License[1]
Website www.freedos.org

FreeDOS (formerly Free-DOS and PD-DOS) is an operating system for IBM PC compatible computers. FreeDOS is made up of many different, separate programs that act as "packages" to the overall FreeDOS Project.[1] As a member of the DOS family, it provides mainly disk access through its kernel, and partial memory management, but no default GUI (although OpenGEM is listed on the official FreeDOS website). FreeDOS is currently at version 1.0, released on September 3, 2006.[3]

FreeDOS supports vintage hardware IBM PC as well as modern ones, in addition to embedded computers. Unlike MS-DOS, it is composed of free and open source software, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). It does not require license fees or royalties and creation of custom distributions is permitted.[1]

Contents

[edit] History

The FreeDOS project began June 26, 1994, when Microsoft announced it would no longer sell nor support MS-DOS. Jim Hall then posted a manifesto proposing the development of an open-source replacement. Within a few weeks, other programmers including Pat Villani and Tim Norman joined the project. A kernel, the COMMAND.COM command line interpreter and core utilities were created by pooling code they had written or found available.[4][5] There have been several official pre-release distributions of FreeDOS before the final FreeDOS 1.0 distribution.[6] Other related distributions such as GNU/DOS were discontinued once FreeDOS 1.0 was released.[7][8]

[edit] Distribution

FreeDOS 1.0 is available for download as CD-ROM images: a base disc that only contains the kernel and basic applications, and a full disc that contains many more applications (games, networking, development, etc) and doubles as a Live CD. In addition, the floppy image that was used to make the live CD is available and can be used without the CD. Versions of these two discs with source code are also available. It may be downloaded with BitTorrent or HTTP.

FreeDOS is also used by several companies. Dell packages FreeDOS with their n-series desktops. The company has been criticized for making these machines no-less-expensive and more difficult to purchase than identical systems running Windows.[9] In addition, Dell often only offers FreeDOS systems with features such as dual-core processors which FreeDOS cannot utilize. HP provides FreeDOS as an option in its dc5750 desktop PCs. ASUS uses FreeDOS to allow the user to boot their motherboard driver CDs to create the SATA device driver disk (needed for Windows versions before XP SP2) .GRC's SpinRite 6 boot image loads FreeDOS, as shown at the bottom of the splash screen.

FreeDOS Version History[6]
Version Status Codename Date
0.05 ALPHA None January 12, 1998
0.1 BETA Orlando March 25, 1998
0.3 BETA Ventura April 21, 1999
0.4 BETA Lemur April 9, 2000
0.5 BETA Lara August 10, 2000
0.6 BETA Midnite March 18, 2001
0.7 BETA Spears September 7, 2001
0.8 BETA Nikita April 7, 2002
0.9rc1 BETA Methusalem July 2003
0.9rc2 BETA None August 23, 2003
0.9rc3 BETA None September 27, 2003
0.9rc4 BETA None February 5, 2004
0.9rc5 BETA None March 20, 2004
0.9 BETA None September 28, 2004
0.9sr1 BETA None November 30, 2004
0.9sr2 BETA None November 30, 2005
1.0 FINAL None September 3, 2006

[edit] Compatibility

[edit] MS-DOS and Win32 console

FreeDOS is mostly compatible with MS-DOS. It supports, .COM executables, standard DOS executables and Borland's 16-bit DPMI executables. It is possible to run 32-bit DPMI executables by using DOS extenders. The operating system also has several improvements relative to MS-DOS, mostly involving support of newer standards and technologies that did not exist when Microsoft ended support for MS-DOS, such as internationalization, APM/energy saving TSRs, and integrated ASPI. Also, LBA and the FAT32 file system (including booting from FAT32) are supported. While no official standalone version of MS-DOS (up to 6.22) released by Microsoft supported them, some non-standalone versions such as MS-DOS 7.10 did.[10] Furthermore, with use of HX DOS Extender, many Win32 console applications function properly in FreeDOS, as do some GUI programs, like QEMU and Bochs.[11]

[edit] Windows 1.0 through 3.xx

FreeDOS is capable of running both the 1.0 and 2.0 releases of Microsoft Windows. However, 3.x releases of Windows, which had support for i386 processors, cannot be run in 386 Enhanced Mode. Windows 3.0 can run in Real or Standard modes, and other Windows 3.x releases can only be run in Standard mode.[12][13] Because Windows for Workgroups 3.11 dropped support for Standard mode, it does not run under FreeDOS, unless FreeDOS's references to himem.exe and emm386.exe are replaced by references to the himem.sys and emm386.exe delivered with Windows. However, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 supports a debugging mode that can run under FreeDOS, but it is more restricted than Standard mode for previous releases of Windows.

[edit] Windows 9x and Windows Millennium Edition

Windows 95, 98 and Me use a stripped down version of MS-DOS as a bootloader. FreeDOS can not be used as a replacement bootloader; however, it can be installed and used beside these systems using a boot manager program, such as the "METAKERN" included with FreeDOS. Problems running Windows result from Microsoft's efforts to prevent their products running on non-Microsoft DOS implementations.[14]

[edit] Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008 and ReactOS

Windows NT-based operating systems, including Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista ,and 2008 do not make use of MS-DOS as a core component of the system. These systems can make use of the FAT filesystems, which are used by MS-DOS and earlier versions of Windows; however, they typically use the NTFS (NT File System) by default. FreeDOS can coexist on these systems on a separate partition on NTFS systems, or on the same partition on FAT systems. The FreeDOS kernel can be booted by adding it to the Windows NT Boot Loader configuration file, boot.ini, or freeldr.ini for ReactOS. FreeDOS can also be run using virtualization software like Virtual PC and VirtualBox or emulation software like Bochs and QEMU.

[edit] Technical details

FAT32 is fully supported, even booting from it. Depending on the BIOS used, as many as four LBA hard disks up to 128 GB, or even 2 TB in size are supported. Care is recommended when using huge disks, since there was little testing so far, and some BIOSes support LBA but produce errors on disks larger than 32 GB. A driver like OnTrack or EzDrive resolves this problem. FreeDOS can also be used with a driver called DOSLFN, which supports long file names (see VFAT), but most old programs do not support long file names even if the driver is loaded. There is no planned support for NTFS or ext2, but there are several external third-party drivers available for that purpose. To access ext2fs, LTOOLS (counterpart to MTOOLS) can be used to copy data to and from ext2fs drives. NTFS support is provided by products such as NTFSDOS and NTFS4DOS.

So far there is no USB driver support inside the FreeDOS project, but many modern motherboards contain BIOS settings for "Legacy USB" support which allow USB devices to be used in operating systems that lack support for them (such as FreeDOS). This applies to keyboards and mice, and some BIOSes can even support storage devices. Some external DOS USB drivers (such as DUSE, USBASPI and USBMASS) for storage devices work with some effort and luck. A better alternative to running DOS programs with USB devices is DOSBox, which recognizes USB devices from the host operating system to act as if they were "legacy port" devices (e.g. joysticks with game ports, printers with parallel ports, and USB flash drives would act as if they were a hard drive for DOS).

[edit] Booting

FreeDOS can be booted from a Hard Drive, Live CD, USB Flash Drive or Floppy Disk.[15][16][17][18] To use the Windows Boot Menu the following line can be added to C:\BOOT.INI:

C:\FDOSBOOT.BIN="FreeDOS"

[edit] Memory management

The FreeCOM shell, FreeDOS's version of COMMAND.COM, can move portions of itself into extended memory freeing up large portions of conventional memory, up to 620 kB. This is useful for DOS programs which only use conventional memory. The HIMEM and EMM386 memory management programs included with FreeDOS provide extended memory (XMS) and expanded memory (EMS) for old real mode software, EMM386 also supports VCPI, which allows DPMI kernels and DOS extenders to coexist with it. FreeDOS also contains an UDMA driver for faster disk access, which is also compatible with other DOS versions. The LBAcache disk cache stores recently accessed disk data in XMS for faster access and less direct disk access.

[edit] Screenshot

FreeDOS editor screenshot

See also the screenshot in the Infobox.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d "The FreeDOS Project". SourceForge (2006-05-21). Retrieved on 2008-01-02.
  2. ^ Villani, Pat (1996) (in English). FreeDOS Kernel. Emeryville, CA, USA: Miller Freeman. ISBN 0-87930-436-7. 
  3. ^ "Official homepage of FreeDOS". FreeDOS. Retrieved on 2008-01-02.
  4. ^ Hall, Jim (2002-03-25). "The past, present, and future of the FreeDOS Project". Retrieved on 2008-06-14.
  5. ^ Hall, Jim (September 23, 2006). "History of FreeDOS". freedos.org. Retrieved on 2007-05-28.
  6. ^ a b Hall, Jim (2007-10-02). "Removing old distributions". SourceForge. Retrieved on 2009-01-02.
  7. ^ "GNU/DOS". SourceForge (2007-03-29). Retrieved on 2009-01-02.
  8. ^ Marinof, Mihai (2006-12-02). "GNU/DOS Project Discontinued". Softpedia. Retrieved on 2009-01-02.
  9. ^ Vance, Ashlee. "How Dell repels attempts to buy its 'open source' PC". The Register. Retrieved on 2008-01-02.
  10. ^ "MS-DOS: A Brief Introduction" (25 April 2004). Retrieved on 2 January 2009.
  11. ^ japheth. "HX DOS Extender". Retrieved on 2009-01-02.
  12. ^ "Win31 runs on FreeDOS!" (2001). Retrieved on 2008-06-21.
  13. ^ "Windows on FreeDOS?" (2004-09-03). Retrieved on 2008-06-21.
  14. ^ Lea, Graham (2000-01-13). "Caldera vs Microsoft - the settlement". BBC News. Retrieved on 2009-01-02.
  15. ^ "How to Create a Bootable FreeDOS Floppy Disk" (2005-07-19). Retrieved on 2008-08-04.
  16. ^ Franske, Ben (2007-08-21). "Booting DOS from a USB flash drive". Retrieved on 2008-08-04.
  17. ^ genetikayos (2005-12-19). "FreeDOS on a USB Flash Drive". Retrieved on 2008-08-04.
  18. ^ "FreeDOS Files". FreeDOS. Retrieved on 2008-08-04.

[edit] See also

Free software portal

[edit] External links

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