FreeDOS 1.2 RC2 Arrives, Still Evolving After 22 Years

[aht0]

Also, wasting your own precious time trying out softwares from this list and be amazed at how long it is: http://www.opus.co.tt/dave/index.htm

I am.. some of it may even be useful..

[devius]

It works!

So, you're running some kind of GUI on top of FreeDOS? What is it?

[MoonMoon]

So, you're running some kind of GUI on top of FreeDOS? What is it?

Most likely this: http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=opengem

[TiberiusDuval]

I thought on that. Last time I had to reflash IBM ServeRAID controller with a LSI firmware, I had to use "traditional" MS-DOS (6.x I think) though. Had some issues with a FreeDOS and became afraid I'd eventually brick the card pushing on..

For my older computer I used Win98 boot disk which started machine in DOS-mode to do bios upgrade. FreeDos likely would have served well in that role too.

[ua=42]

For running dos software there is also dosbox.

[TiberiusDuval]

Dosbox is nice, if you want just run some nicely behaving dos-software, but if you really need something directly manipulating hardware, it is not reliable alternative.

[trek]

So, you're running some kind of GUI on top of FreeDOS? What is it?

it seems to be https://sourceforge.net/projects/fltk-dos/

[timofonic]

FreeDOS is seriously quite underrated and lacks tons of manpower.

Little happened, it depends mostly on outdated packages. These days it would have a full featured package manager and really modern development environment.

The reasons are very diverse: Historical and research of it, reverse engineering, etc.

FreeDOS should evolve to become the total successor of MS-DOS, DR-DOS, PTS-DOS and all others. And support modern hardware like USB3 and latest 64bit systems, that eventually may remove support to legacy instruction sets so unable to run DOS software without the wise usage of a JIT.

FreeDOS site is a joke, the development community too. Too many dependencies on external software, yet it should have something similar like Gentoo's Portage to maintain them.

DosBOX is full of forks everywhere: A project with a barely usable site. Are they still using SVN instead Git? There's lots of forks, that's a clear sign of bad project management.

- dosbox-libretro DOSbox wrapper for libretro (Nov 22, 2016)
- [url=https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x]DOSBox-X[/url} fork of the DOSBox project ( Nov 7, 2016)
- dosbox-rewrite Experimental rewrite of DOSBox-X (Up: Oct 17, 2016)
- DOSBOX fork for WWIV (or any) BBS (Up: Sep 3, 2016)
- dospad: Dosbox port for iOS, aka iDOS (Up :Sep 27, 1016)
-[url=https://github.com/MarkZ87/BloodBox]BloodBox]: Modified version of DosBox to run Blood (Up: Jul 1, 2016)
-[url=https://github.com/Henne/Bright-Eyes]: A variation of DOSBox with customized support for the CRPG - "Das schwarze Auge 1 - Schicksalsklinge" (Up: Apr 28, 2016)
- dosbox fork (Up: Nov 19, 2016)
- Magicbox/Magic Dosbox Commercial Android port. They give you the source code if you provide them the purchase code (WTF?).
- [url=http://dosboxturbo.priorityencoding.com]Dosbox Turbo]: Another commercial Android port. They give you the source code if you provide them the purchase code (WTF?).
- vDOS: DosBox fork for business applications.
- vDosPlus: A vDOS fork
- win9xbox: DosBox fork for win9x support..

- DOS Night Kernel / The Owl Kernel (old site?): A 32bit DOS kernel.

https://github.com/Azarien/dosbox
https://github.com/ronnywang/dosbox
https://github.com/paveldhq/dosbox
dosbox mirror? (Up: Oct 3, 2016)
dosbox mirror? (Up: Oct 3, 2016)
dosbox mirror? (Up: Oct 3, 2016)
dosbox-fork (mirror?) (Up: Oct 3, 2016)
https://github.com/aybe/dosbox-svn-daum

https://github.com/duganchen/dosbox_shaders
https://github.com/wjp/idados
https://github.com/lab313ru/idados_dosbox

Other DOS/PC emulators:
https://bitbucket.org/superfury/unipcemu/
https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/
https://github.com/OBattler/86Box
https://github.com/OBattler/PCem-X
https://github.com/dhrdlicka/PCem-Experimental

But I'm not a programmer, just a lurker.

[kneekoo]

So, you're running some kind of GUI on top of FreeDOS? What is it?

This is what I did

1. I installed FreeDOS in a VirtualBox machine, by using the wizard to get automatic configuration
2. I installed PCNTPK (copied pcntpk.com in \FDOS\BIN by using DOSZIP - dz) and loaded it in autoexec.bat with LH PCNTPK INT=0x60
3. I installed dillo with: fdnpkg install dillo
4. cd \dillo\bin
5. I started the browser: dillo www.phoronix.com

If you want dillo to be accessible from any directory, add it in the path line in autoexec.bat (using the auto command):
SET PATH=%dosdir%\BIN;C:\DILLO\BIN

[kneekoo]

By the way, DOSZIP is available in the full installation - the only way I tried FreeDOS. And I put pcntpk.zip inside a floppy disk image, which I mounted in VirtualBox.