Entertainment under DOS. FreeDOS: what DOS could be like

FreeDOS 1.2 Final – operating system (OS)

– an operating system (OS) that is fully compatible with Microsoft MS-DOS, but differs in that it is distributed under the terms of the free GNU license.

This OS was first released in 2006 and is installed by default on laptops and computers from various manufacturers.

Dell, HP and Lenovo manufacture and supply personal computers with a pre-installed operating system , this reduces the overall cost of the computer (compared to pre-installed Windows OS). Also installed on ASUS and Samsung laptops.

Thanks to DOS/32 (a development of DOS/4GW) and Open Watcom (a development of Watcom), FreeDOS is a lightweight solution for industrial computers with PC architecture.

The FreeDOS distribution includes a large number of free programs - both written specifically for DOS and ported from Unix-like systems using DJGPP: utilities, browsers (Lynx, Arachne), text editors (edlin, edit, vim, emacs), several games (including including FreeDoom), GEM graphics system, etc.

FreeDOS principle:

• The system was created as a full-fledged alternative to the existing MS-DOS, which is distributed under a paid license. The development of the Free DOS project began back in 1994, but the system was released in a stable version 1.0 only in 2006. The OS is free and can be run on almost any new and outdated equipment, as well as using emulators to run the necessary applications under DOS. The system code is open, which means, if desired, it can be modified by any developer to suit his own needs.

Usage:

• The system is used by computer and laptop manufacturers as a free alternative to MS-DOS and other products from Microsoft, which can significantly increase the cost of a particular device, which as a result can negatively affect equipment sales. Dell, HP and ASUS provide users with the opportunity to buy computers running FreeDOS.

Characteristics:

• The OS runs on the FAT32 file system. It supports all basic file operations that are available in other operating systems.
• Free DOS supports opening archives (ZIP, 7-ZIP).
• Editing text documents using additional programs.
• Viewing HTML pages, working with mouse pointers with a scroll wheel.
• Another feature of Free DOS is a large number of programs ported from Linux.
• The system has its own browser, BitTorrent client and even anti-virus software.
• Free DOS supports work with any modern computer that supports x86 architecture. In this case, the device must have at least 2 MB of RAM, and about 40 MB may be required to install the system.
• The system can be launched not only after installation, but also through virtual machines (for example, VirtualBox), which can be installed on standard Windows, Linux or Mac.
• To directly install FreeDOS on your computer, just download the system and burn it to a blank CD, then restart your computer and boot from the disk.

FreeDOS is a complete, DOS-compatible operating system that you can use to play classic DOS games, run legacy business software, or develop embedded systems. Any program that works on MS-DOS should also run on FreeDOS. It doesnt cost anything to download and run FreeDOS. Even better, you can view and edit our source code. All FreeDOS programs are distributed under the GNU General Public License or a similar open source software license.

Free DOS is an operating system that is fully compatible with the released one; however, the project is distinguished by the fact that this development is distributed under the terms of a free license, which is the “GNU”. The platform was released back in 2006 and is installed on computers and laptops from various manufacturers as the default system.

Project principle

Free DOS was created as a full-fledged alternative to the previously available MS-DOS, because the latter is distributed under a paid license. Development of the project began in 1994, but the platform was prepared in the first stable version with index 1.0 only in 2006. The OS is completely free and can be run on almost any legacy or new hardware.

In addition, you can use emulators to implement it, which will allow you to run the necessary applications under DOS. At the same time, the system code is open, which means that, if desired, any developer can modify it to suit his own needs.

About using the system

Currently, version 1.1 of the system can be easily downloaded on the official website of the developers as a CD image for installation. Free DOS is used by laptop and computer manufacturers as a free alternative to MS-DOS, as well as other products from Microsoft, which can significantly increase the cost of the device, which will result in a negative impact on sales of certain computer equipment. ASUS, HP and Dell companies provide users with the opportunity to buy computers with FreeDOS pre-installed.

About the characteristics

The OS works with Free DOS and supports absolutely all basic operations on files on the PC that are available in other well-known operating systems.

In addition, the system supports working with archives (7-ZIP, ZIP), editing various text documents using additional programs, working with mouse pointers that have a scroll wheel, and viewing HTML pages. If we talk about what Free DOS is and what its features are, it should be noted that there are a large number of programs that were ported from Linux.

This system has its own browser, BitTorrent client and even anti-virus software. The project supports work on any modern computer, mainly x86 architecture. The device must be equipped with at least 2 MB of its own RAM; installation of this system requires about 40 MB.

The operating system can be launched not only after installation is completed, but also through special ones (for example, VirtualBox), they can be deployed on standard Mac, Linux or Windows platforms.

In addition, it is possible to launch the system directly from the browser window, thanks to the Java emulator, which is available to the user for download on the official website of the developer.

To ensure direct installation of the platform on a computer, you need to download the latest version of the system, then burn the image to a blank CD, restart the computer, and finally boot the PC from the disk.

About the configuration

The system distribution includes a significant number of various free programs, among them some written specifically for the DOS project and ported from Unix-like platforms using DJGPP: a graphic system, several games, text editors, browsers, and utilities. Thanks to DOS/32, as well as Open Watcom, FreeDOS is an easy solution for any industrial computers that are based on FreeDOS can be easily installed on Samsung and ASUS laptops. As part of this project, a replacement for the MS-DOS command interpreter has been developed.

The system was created as a full-fledged alternative to the existing MS-DOS, which is distributed under a paid license. The development of the Free DOS project began back in 1994, but the system was released in a stable version 1.0 only in 2006. The OS is free and can be run on almost any new and outdated equipment, as well as using emulators to run the necessary applications under DOS. The system code is open, which means, if desired, it can be modified by any developer to suit his own needs.

Usage

Today, the system in version 1.1 can be downloaded from the official website of the developers as a CD image for installation. The system is used by computer and laptop manufacturers as a free alternative to MS-DOS and other products from Microsoft, which can significantly increase the cost of a particular device, which as a result can negatively affect equipment sales. Dell, HP and ASUS provide users with the opportunity to buy computers running FreeDOS.

Characteristics

The OS runs on the FAT32 file system. It supports all basic file operations that are available in other operating systems. Free DOS also supports opening archives (ZIP, 7-ZIP), editing text documents using additional programs, viewing HTML pages, and working with mouse pointers with a scroll wheel. Another feature of Free DOS is a large number of programs ported from Linux. The system has its own browser, BitTorrent client and even anti-virus software.

Free DOS supports work with any modern computer that supports x86 architecture. In this case, the device must have at least 2 MB of RAM, and about 40 MB may be required to install the system. The system can be launched not only after installation, but also through virtual machines (for example, VirtualBox), which can be installed on standard Windows, Linux or Mac. It is also possible to launch the system directly in the browser window using a Java emulator, which is available for download from the developer’s official website. To directly install Free DOS on your computer, just download the latest version of the system and burn it to a blank CD, then restart your computer and boot from the disk.

Content:
1. FreeDOS operating system (You are reading this section);
2. .
When operating systems such as MS Windows 7, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Ubuntu Linux 9.10 Karmic Koala and others are released one after another, using a modern graphical interface, supporting work with the latest hardware and having the latest in their distribution and repositories versions of applications suitable for all occasions, it seems there is no point in considering the operating systems of yesteryear - for example, “disk operating systems” (DOS).

But it is not so. Of course, now DOS operating systems do not occupy such a dominant position as they did in the late 80s and 90s of the last century, when they replaced system bootloaders. The scope of DOS became narrower and highly specialized. Developers lost interest in them. Many versions of DOS have disappeared, but there are still some that not only still exist, but are also kept up to date. For example, FreeDOS.

Operating system FreeDOS

FreeDOS OS was developed back in 1994 and was originally called PD-DOS. The main reason that caused the appearance of this OS was the cessation of support for MS-DOS by Microsoft. FreeDOS does not use code created by Microsoft. The latest version of FreeDOS, numbered 1.0, was released on September 3, 2006. The FreeDOS distribution can be downloaded from the project website (http://www.freedos.org). Two versions of ISO images are offered: basic (8 MB), which contains only the operating system in its pure form, and extended (153 MB), which includes many open-source applications designed to run under FreeDOS. The same site has a video explaining how to install FreeDOS in a VMWare virtual environment. If you need the system source codes, you can also get them from the same site. If you want to look for information about FreeDOS on the Internet, then one of the starting points can be Wikipedia (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeDOS) or the knowledge base of the project itself (http://sourceforge.net/apps/ mediawiki/freedos/index.php?title=Main Page).

FreeDOS itself is distributed under the GNU GPL. As for the applications included in the extended distribution, each of them is distributed under its own license. The project website contains a list of these applications with a brief description, release date of the latest version, a link to the site and an indication of the license. A list of application groups is available at http://www.freedos.org/freedos/software, from where you can navigate to lists of specific applications.

FreeDOS is a single-tasking operating system. The core of FreeDOS is the DOS-C program, originally created as a DOS kernel for embedded systems. This is a monolithic kernel that operates in a single address space and, thanks to this, provides a fairly high system speed. The OS can be trusted to manage processes that require immediate response. In it, unlike multitasking operating systems, situations do not arise when some “bad” process or driver seizes control and can hold it for quite a long time. But do not consider FreeDOS as a real-time system - due to the monolithic nature of the kernel, the entire system can completely “crash” due to a very insignificant error that occurred in some minor module.

As a command interpreter, FreeDOS uses its own - FreeCOM, which, according to the developers, fully implements all the capabilities of the COMMAND.COM interpreter of the MS-DOS operating system. FreeDOS was originally designed to be fully compatible with MS-DOS so that you could use applications developed for MS-DOS. During the existence of MS-DOS, a huge number of programs were created, and some of them still have not lost their practical value.

If you are interested in the FreeDOS system and want to get to know it better, download the extended distribution, which is a LiveCD, from the FreeDOS project website, i.e. an already configured FreeDOS environment, which will be easier to work with. In addition, the extended distribution has very detailed documentation, although in English. The base distribution is only interesting if you need FreeDOS to perform some utilitarian task, for example, to create a bootable flash drive for a presentation or to prepare a bootable CD with a driver for flashing the motherboard.

To work in FreeDOS, it is useful to know the basics of its command line. A list of all FreeDOS commands with a brief description can be found at http://www.linfo.org/freedos_commands.html. If you are new to the rules of working on the command line, then before you start installing FreeDOS, download a file manager from the network (for example, Volkov Commander - http://www. kiev.ua/download/vc49908a.zip) and add it into a bootable ISO image. Similarly, you can expand the original bootable ISO image with drivers for your network card, which can usually be found on network card developer sites, as well as networking programs or other utilities that you think may be useful in a FreeDOS environment .

FreeDOS fully supports working with the FAT32 file system. “In its pure form” this allows you to work with disks up to 32 GB in size. However, depending on the BIOS setting and the appropriate drivers, the system can use up to four LBA drives up to 128 GB in size. There are also drivers that allow the use of long file names (in “pure” DOS, the length of file names should not exceed 8 characters), and drivers that allow you to work with NTFS and ext2 file systems.

As for USB devices, FreeDOS does not directly support working with them. However, if their support is carried out at the BIOS level, then in the FreeDOS system there are no problems, for example, with USB keyboards and mice. With USB drives, the system works exactly the same as with regular drives, but you must connect the USB device before you start loading FreeDOS (there is no automatic mounting of USB devices).

FreeDOS can be installed alongside other systems (in which case you will need to multiboot to access it). But it’s easier and more convenient to create a virtual machine and install FreeDOS in it. For example, if you choose VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org), then all you need to do is create a new virtual machine inside VirtualBox, for which select Other -- DOS as the OS type, agree to the settings , offered by default (they are quite enough for FreeDOS), and as a CD - mount an ISO image downloaded from the FreeDOS project website. After this, it will be enough to launch the virtual machine you created - FreeDOS will begin loading.

ANDREY MARKELOV

Free DOS for free people,
or not Linux alone man lives

When people talk about the operating system, abbreviated DOS, few people think about what kind of Disk Operation System they are talking about. The designation of a whole class of operating systems for most people has become synonymous with only one of its representatives - MS DOS from Microsoft. Someone may remember PC DOS, which differs mainly only in the name and names of some files. Maybe someone will come up with DR-DOS from Digital Research, the creator of the predecessor of DOS from Microsoft, the CP/M operating system. But in general, for almost everyone, DOS is MS-DOS, the last version of which was released ten years ago, and which has long since completed its development.

However, there are still in use a huge number of programs running in the environment and written for this resource-undemanding OS, and no less a number of obsolete computers that work perfectly under it. How to be? After all, MS-DOS has not been supported or sold for a long time. I would advise you to pay attention to FreeDOS, originally written by Jim Hall, and now developed with the participation of a whole team of developers from different parts of the world.

The free OS FreeDOS was announced by its creator Jim Hall on June 28, 1994, initially under the name PD-DOS. Already in July, the prefix “PD-” was replaced by “Free-”. The operating system lost the “hyphen” between the two components of the name in 1996 under rather curious circumstances. This year, R+D Books published a book called Free-DOS Kernel, and the publisher's editor dropped the hyphen in the title purely for design reasons.

Jim cites Microsoft's cessation of support for the MS-DOS operating system as the main reason for the emergence of the project. So, for 10 years now we have had a real alternative to the MS-DOS operating system, but under the GNU license. The FreeDOS Project does not use code created by Microsoft. According to open specifications, the team writes its own code with similar functionality.

The core of FreeDOS is DOS-C, originally written by Pat Villani as a DOS kernel for embedded systems. The original name was DOS/NT. DOS/NT contained 32,000 lines of code, was written in C and assembly language, and was distributed as shareware.

FreeDOS runs on legacy hardware (starting from 5 MHz IBM PC XT with 640 KB of RAM), embedded systems, various virtual machines, including DOSEmu, VMWare and Bochs. FreeDOS is an ideal, licensed solution for creating a “rescue” boot floppy. Another use is as an environment for executing your programs or updates. The client just needs to boot from the floppy disk or CD received from you, and now you (or your support service) no longer have to hang on the phone for hours, explaining to an accountant located several hundred kilometers away how to find the C: drive.

FreeDOS has excellent compatibility with DOS programs, including good old games: DOOM, Quake, Warcraft 2. And the well-known company Dell even sells its desktops with one of the versions of this operating system pre-installed on them.

Of the features of FreeDOS, I want to note: support for FAT-32 disks up to 128 GB, network support (you can install an ftp and HTTP server on FreeDOS), but the lack of built-in support for NTFS and USB. However, FreeDOS works quite normally with USB keyboards, USB mice, Serial-ATA drives, if the computer BIOS supports them.

Using additional drivers, it is possible to work with long names.

Installation

So, you have decided to get acquainted with a new operating system. Wonderful! The fifty-megabyte distribution kit “FreeDOS Beta9 pre-release 3” (the latest at the time of writing) was downloaded as an ISO image from the site http://www.freedos.org and recorded on a blank. We insert the resulting boot CD into the tray of your CD-ROM and restart the computer. Don't forget to select the CD drive as your boot device.

I will describe installing FreeDOS on a “clean” machine, but no one is stopping you from using the so-called “dual boot”. I successfully installed MS-DOS, FreeDOS, Linux and Windows 2000 on one computer at the same time. Moreover, I used the standard Boot Loader from Windows 2000 as the bootloader. Using the excellent BootPart 2.50 utility, you can save an image of a 512-byte boot sector with the FreeDOS, Lilo bootloader or GRUB to a file, and then simply add a link to it in C:BOOT.INI.

For details, I refer you to the program’s home page - http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/gvollant/bootpart.htm. In addition, you can always try running FreeDOS in a virtual machine environment. It should be noted that for DOSEmu the operating system in question is already “official” and recommended for use.

After booting from the distribution disk, we find ourselves in the installer menu. Press “1” to start. Next, select installation using the CD-ROM and XMS driver – “2”. On machines with 8086 - 80286 processors, select “1”.

The following menu has several options:

• "1"- installation;
• "2"– go to the command line;
• "3"– create a boot floppy disk.

Select “1” and “1” again to confirm the default settings.

Now we find ourselves in the “FreeDOS Partition Management” menu. If the hard drive was not partitioned into logical drives, then now it is possible to partition it using an analogue of the MS-DOS utility FDISK. In addition, you can run the utility known to all Linux users for changing partition sizes - FIPS, and also format the disk. I note that the distribution's FORMAT utility contains errors (which were corrected in a later version that was not included in the ISO image), and if there are errors during formatting, it is better to perform this operation from another OS, and replace FORMAT after installation with a more recent version from the project website . Another option to solve this problem is to perform a “quick” FORMAT from FreeDOS.

If you already have a formatted disk, then simply select it with the arrow keys and press “Enter”. Afterwards, the installer prompts you to select an installation option - graphical or textual. Having selected, press “Enter” and in the case of graphics we find ourselves in an interface reminiscent of the installation interface of a regular Windows application. We accept the GNU GPL license agreement, specify the installation path (C:FDOS) and the set of packages to be installed. Now all that remains is to monitor the progress of the installation. Once the files are copied, several configuration scripts will be launched, and then we will be taken to the command line, receiving a reminder to write the boot sector with the BOOT command. Type “boot” and press “Enter”. You can now reboot the machine while removing the CD from the drive.

Setting up your habitat

First, briefly about the directory structure and files included in the distribution. After installing FreeDOS in the root of the C: drive we have:

• autoexec.bat, config.sys– syntax-extended analogues of MS-DOS configuration files;
• fdosboot.bin– FreeDOS boot sector as a file;
• command.com– command line interface;
• kernel.sys– operating system kernel (analogous to msdos.sys).

The service files and utilities themselves are installed in C:FDOS by default. Within the directory there are the following subdirectories:

• APPINFO– lsm format files with a brief description of the distribution utilities;
• BIN– utilities and drivers;
• DOC, HELP– documentation;
• INSTBASE– installation logs of all packages;
• NLS– localization files for several languages.

First of all, I would recommend updating the operating system files. The main candidates for update (of those that have been improved compared to “FreeDOS Beta9 pre-release 3”) are the new kernel version number 2033, FreeCOM shell - command line interface, EMM386, Format, Shsucdx, Undelete, Edit. Links to utilities and files for downloading can be found on the project website. To update, as a rule, it is enough to simply replace the old files with new ones from the downloaded zip archive. When you update the kernel files, note that the kernel binaries are distributed in two versions: keXXXX_32.zip - with FAT-32 support and keXXXX_16.zip - only with FAT-16 support.

Next, make sure the CD drive is accessible. The config.sys file should contain the line:

DEVICE=C:FDOSinatapicdd.sys /D:FDCD0001

And the autoexec.bat command:

C:FDOSinShsucdx /D:FDCD0001

As you can see, the syntax of these commands does not differ from the syntax of Microsoft DOS commands. The only differences are in the file names.

Drugim vagnjm voprosom jvljaetsja russifikazcija. The current version does not support COUNTRY, but GRAFTABL can be used to support code page 866. On the other hand, the simplest solution would be to use (until full support for the Russian language appears out of the box) one of the Russifiers: Keyrus or rc. They served us well in MS-DOS, and they will serve us just as well in FreeDOS.

The next frequently encountered task is accessing NTFS volumes. The FreeDOS kernel does not support NTFS, but from the link http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/ntfs-dos.shtml you can download a free version of NTFSDOS - drivers that work under FreeDOS and provide access to NTFS volumes in "only" mode. for reading". There is also a paid Professional version with recording capabilities.

Using the program is extremely simple. Add a call to the ntfsdos.exe file to the autuexec.bat file and the utility will scan the available disks and, if NTFS volumes are found on them, will mount them without your intervention.

Now let's move on to the “long” file names that go beyond the 8+3 formula, which first appeared in Windows 95 SR2. There are several utilities built to support long names. For example, the DOSLFN package, which can be downloaded from http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~heha/hs_freeware/freew.html. We write in autoexec.bat a call to the doslfn.com TSR module, which occupies 16 KB of RAM, and this completes the entire installation. A potential problem is that not all CD-ROM drives support long names. If such problems occur, you can try another package that performs similar functions - LFN Tools (http://www.odi.ch).

Graphic shells

Any task in FreeDOS can be completed without leaving the command line. But, of course, it is much more convenient to use one of the many so-called “shells” - shells. I would like to remind you that MS Windows, up to version Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, was nothing more than a shell for MS-DOS. And only Windows 95 took on the proud name of an operating system.

Speaking of shells, first of all I will mention the shell - the immortal file manager Norton Commander and its numerous clones, for example, the miniature Volkov Commander and the open source manager Dos Navigator (http://www.ritlabs.com/dn).

The above programs have a text interface based on pseudographics. It is much more interesting to get acquainted with truly graphical shells. Some of the shells that work in the FreeDOS environment are listed in the table.

Project name	Latest Version	License	Min. requirements (CPU/RAM/HDD/Video)	Internet address
SEAL	2.00.11 from 04/14/2002	GPL	486/8M/1.6M/VGA	SEAL– a thirty-two-bit shell, reminiscent of MS Windows in interface. The package contains a certain minimum set of applications, including a text editor, a development environment, a graphics editor, a file manager, a CD player, a program for extracting images from floppy disks, and more than a dozen games. To install, just unzip the archive downloaded from the site and run install.exe. The shell is launched with the command C:seal2seal.exe. OpenGEM– development of Digital Research GEM under the open GPL license. OpenGEM is a fairly large package - it requires almost 10 MB on your hard drive. There is a version that fits on a floppy disk - GEMini. Brief installation instructions. After the distribution has been downloaded and unzipped, run install.bat. The installer will ask several questions: where to install the package and whether Windows is installed on the computer. After working out the batch file, add lines from the C:fgconfig.sys file to config.sys. The shell is launched with the command C:gem.bat. The OpenGEM interface is shown in the following figure: The package includes more than 30 applications. Including word processor, spreadsheets, HTML browser, games. That's all. Many topics related to FreeDOS remained undisclosed, including creating your own distribution and supporting network services. But this is already material for a separate article. In contact with Classmates