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FreeDOS
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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. 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.
FreeDOS supports vintage hardware IBM PC as well as modern ones, in addition to embedded computers.
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Encyclopedia
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. 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.
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. However, in its "util" section it includes also non-free software such as 4DOS.
History
The FreeDOS project began June 261994, when Microsoft announced it would no longer sell or 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. There have been several official pre-release distributions of FreeDOS before the final FreeDOS 1.0 distribution. Other related distributions such as GNU/DOS were discontinued once FreeDOS 1.0 was released.
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 cheaper and more difficult to purchase than identical systems running Windows. 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.
- Seagate's SeaTools for DOS loads the FreeDOS kernel.
| FreeDOS Version History |
|---|
| 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 |
Compatibility
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 also possible to run 32-bit DPMI executables using DOS extenders. The operating system 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. Furthermore, with use of HX DOS Extender, many Win32 console applications function properly in FreeDOS, as do some GUI programs, like QEMU and Bochs.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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).
Booting
FreeDOS can be booted from a Hard Drive, Live CD, USB Flash Drive or Floppy Disk. To use the Windows Boot Menu the following line can be added to C:\BOOT.INI:
C:\FDOSBOOT.BIN="FreeDOS"
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.
Screenshot
See also the screenshot in the Infobox.
See also
External links
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