FreeDOS 1.3 Released To Advance This Open-Source MS-DOS Replacement

[skeevy420]

that sucks, Im not sure I will ever be satisfies with filesystems on linux at this rate, bcachefs seems to have potential. I think once vk support lands in qemu, ill switch to using a VM for all my stuff, and help test it out.

not that I think bcachefs will magically fix issues like this, i'm not naive. but the dev seems to be putting a lot of thought into stuff along these lines.

It's not so bad. Just puts me behind a half a day or more. I'm not in any hurry so that's not problem.

I agree. As far as Linux-only is concerned, bcachefs looks to be a great file system that will replace BTRFS. I think that's a given.

As you can tell, I'm very happy with ZFS. For all the features I use and utilize I'd either have go old school with lots of partitions for specific file systems and data or just omit using certain features. Here's an edited portion of my wip script to show what I mean:

# create parent dataset for games
zfs create -m /$NAME/games $NAME/layer/games

# use high compression for rom storage
zfs create -o compression=zstd-19 -m /$NAME/games/emulation $NAME/layer/games/emulation

# create parent dataset for PC games
zfs create -m /$NAME/games/pc $NAME/layer/games/pc

# use case insensitivity for windows games
zfs create -o casesensitivity=insensitive -m /$NAME/games/pc/windows $NAME/layer/games/pc/windows

Where compression isn't explicitly set it's inheriting LZ4 from the parent dataset. AFAIK, outside of ramdisks/swap, only bcachefs on Linux actually uses LZ4 for active disk data compression; F2FS only uses LZ4 for metadata compression and doesn't give the free space to the user. Basically, using high-speed LZ4 for active data, like for the Steam client and Wine prefixes, and OMG WHY Zstd-19 on WORM data is something that only ZFS and bcachefs can do. BTRFS can come very, very close with zstd-fast levels; ZFS can do that too (I'm not sure where bcache is in regards to zstd-fast support).

The other one up there is case sensitivity. AFAIK, that's only an Ext4 feature. Sticking with Linux-only file systems I'd have to pick between Wine case sensitivity optimizations or inline compression. Well, shucks. But ZFS comes to the rescue since it can do both.

Just for games alone you can see how having a flexible file system can be beneficial. No need to have to plan out a partition layout that you hope will stand the test of time and then having to pick and choose file systems based on specific features. Instead there's just one partition and you add datasets with the features you need as necessary.

AFAICT, if bcachefs had case insensitive support it would cover all the features that I use ZFS for as a home user. If I was Valve, bcachefs is something I'd look into if going with ZFS isn't an option.

[Old Nobody]

Very cool little project. I remember how long it took them to reach version 1.0. Curious what the max ram support for it is, can it go all the way up to 4GB or even more with PAE or is it limited to a lot lower amount.

FreeDOS comes with the memory manager JEMMEX, which does support PAE and more than 4 GByte RAM.
Though I guess there is not a single DOS program to test that.

[[deXter]]

Does anyone know what's actually changed?

There's not much info on the release page, besides saying there's a new kernel and new FreeCOM, but what's new in them?

"Return of networking" -> What do they mean by "networking", are they now including packet drivers for network cards, if so which ones? Does this include TCP/IP support?

The release announcement says "Check the Readme for more details.", but the actual readme doesn't have even have a changelog.

Such vague release notes for a new release after 6 years.

[danielnez1]

So still no Windows 3.x enhanced mode support.

It's pretty frustrating and stops (in my IMHO) FreeDOS from being a MS/PC/DR-DOS drop-in replacement. It is good to see patches to enable Windows 3.x enhanced mode in the FreeDOS kernel, though Jemm (one of the provided and usually default extended memory mangers) lacks the support of the Global EMM Import Specification (GEMMIS) that would allow it to co-exist with Windows in enhanced mode (BTW DOSBox supports GEMMS). Jemm also seems to mess up Breadbox Ensemble/FreeGEOS as well, even on bare metal hardware - though FreeGEOS probably pushes what you can do with x86 real mode right up to it's limit (GEOS currently only enters protected mode on a 386/higher for memory paging).

[cardpuncher]

Does anyone know what's actually changed?

There's not much info on the release page, besides saying there's a new kernel and new FreeCOM, but what's new in them?

Bug fixes, new and updated translations for FreeCOM. On FreeDOS news archive, one can read "This release fixes a regression with IF ERRORLEVEL in the 0.85 release and a regression that prevented the debug builds from working. Other changes are minor and mostly documentation updates. ... The files with ow are built with Open Watcom (default compiler), the files with bc are built with Borland C/C++ 3, and the files with gcc are built with GCC (ia16). Currently only xms-swap GCC (ia16) built version is provided, please see artifacts from automatic builds for latest builds with GCC".

For version 0.85, the news archive states: "The FreeCOM release provides multiple variants - the recommended is one of the Open Watcom xms-swap versions. The files with ow are built with Open Watcom and the files with bc are built with Borland C/C++. Currently only English xms-swap GCC (ia16) built version is provided, please see automatic builds for latest builds with GCC. The files with -intl use English language for critical errors and provide strings. for all supported languages. The xmsswap. files are recommended for computers with XMS memory, as XMS memory is used for swapping. The command.* files use standard swapping and swap to disk. The language specific versions are compiled for the specific language so the critical errors will also be translated if available. These are only provided in Open Watcom builds.".

Regarding the kernel, again from the news archive: "For the kernel, some changes include now support building with GCC-ia16, CHAIN command in config.sys, various fixes, new setver capabilities. Source and 8086 compatible builds provided, f16 only supports FAT12/FAT16, while f32 also supports FAT32 formatted disks (both 8086). kernel.zip provides a FreeDOS package, 8086 version with FAT12/FAT16 and 386 version with FAT12/FAT16/FAT32. ke2043_rufus is a 386 compiled version with FAT12/16/32 support and FORCELBA enabled. Also see the git history for the full change log."

And finally, "Can you run Windows 3.1 on FreeDOS? Until now, you could only run Windows 3.1 in Standard mode on FreeDOS. But thanks to recent work on the FreeDOS kernel, you can run Windows 3.1 in Enhanced mode on FreeDOS. Check out Jeremy's video, showing the latest FreeDOS kernel running Windows 3.1 in Enhanced and Standard mode. More info from Jeremy about the updated kernel: "I haven't pushed the changes to the public GitHub repository yet as there are still some rough edges to fix (all the changes are technically there, just in the old unstable branch). I will make a test version (with source) available later this week along with steps to run Windows. ... For the technical aspect - the changes are minimal to the kernel, added support for a few int 2F function calls that were never merged in was about all it took. All significant changes behind a WIN31SUPPORT #ifdef so doesn't need to be compiled in if unwanted."

"Return of networking" -> What do they mean by "networking", are they now including packet drivers for network cards, if so which ones? Does this include TCP/IP support?

Yes, TCP/IP support is there. As for packet drivers there's LSPPP, a PPP packet driver for dial-up modems and there's a bunch of Crynwr packet drivers for Ethernet (the FDIMPLES program allows to install these packages from the CD). Also, if you're using a VM in VirtualBox, the network is automatically detected and enabled via DHCP thanks to Michael B. Brutman's mTCP TCP/IP kernel.

Such vague release notes for a new release after 6 years.

Hope this was useful. I would post links, but I'm a newbie here and messages with links require approval and my previous message never got one, so...