FreeDOS

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FreeDOS

FreeDOS booting screen shot
Company / developer	Jim Hall & The FreeDOS team
OS family	DOS
Working state	Current
Source model	Free Software/Open Source[1] plus non-GPL util section[2]
Latest stable release	1.0 / 2006-09-03; 2 years ago
Available language(s)	English, German
Supported platforms	x86
Kernel type	Monolithic kernel[3]
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.^[4]

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] However, in its "util" section, it includes non-GPL software such as 4DOS.^[2]

Contents 1 History 2 Distribution 2.1 Commercial Uses 3 Compatibility 3.1 MS-DOS and Win32 console 3.2 Windows 1.0 to 3.xx 3.3 Windows 9x and Windows Millennium Edition 3.4 Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008 and ReactOS 3.5 File systems 3.6 Universal Serial Bus 4 Technical details 4.1 Booting 4.2 Memory management 5 References 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] History

The FreeDOS project began June 26, 1994 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.^[5][6] There have been several official pre-release distributions of FreeDOS before the final FreeDOS 1.0 distribution.^[7] GNU/DOS, a distribution of FreeDOS, was discontinued after version 1.0 was released.^[8][9]

[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. Versions of these two discs with source code are also available. It may be downloaded with BitTorrent, FTP or HTTP.^[10]

[edit] Commercial Uses

FreeDOS is also used by several companies:

• Dell includes FreeDOS with their n-series desktops. The firm has been criticized for making these machines no cheaper, and harder to buy than identical systems with Windows.^[11] In addition, Dell often only offers FreeDOS systems with features such as dual-core processors, which FreeDOS cannot use (although theoretically a DOS extender could).
• HP provides FreeDOS as an option in its dc5750 desktop PCs and will in their upcoming "probook" notebooks. ^[12]
• ASUS uses FreeDOS to let users boot their motherboard driver CDs to create the SATA device driver disk (needed for Windows versions before XP SP2).^{[citation needed]}
• GRC's SpinRite 6, a hard drive maintenance and recovery program, includes FreeDOS.^[13][14]
• Seagate's SeaTools for DOS loads the FreeDOS kernel.^[15]

[edit] Compatibility

FreeDOS Version History[7]
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
1.1	COMING	None	No date available

[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 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, Advanced Power Management TSRs, and integrated ASPI.^[16] Furthermore, with use of HX DOS Extender, many Win32 console applications function properly in FreeDOS, as do some GUI programs, like QEMU and Bochs.^[17]

[edit] Windows 1.0 to 3.xx

FreeDOS is able to run Microsoft Windows 1.0 and 2.0 releases. Windows 3.x releases, which had support for i386 processors, can be run in 386 Enhanced Mode since FreeDOS kernel build 2037^[18].

[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.^[19]

[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.^[20]

[edit] File systems

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.^{[citations needed]}

[edit] Universal Serial Bus

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. There is also DOSUSB which offers an API and supports storage devices, printers and serial adapters. An 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), but this requires an OS with a GUI.^{[citations needed]}

[edit] Technical details

[edit] Booting

FreeDOS can be booted from a Hard Drive, Live CD, USB Flash Drive or Floppy Disk.^{[21][22][23][24]} It can also be run using virtualization software like Virtual PC and VirtualBox or emulation software like Bochs and QEMU.^[5] To use the Windows Boot Menu the following line can be added to C:\BOOT.INI:^[20]

C:\FDOSBOOT.BIN="FreeDOS"

To boot using GRUB something similar to the following can be added to menu.lst:

title FreeDOS           # Anything you want
root hd(x,y)            # x = device and y = partition on which FreeDOS resides
chainloader /kernel.sys # Boots FreeDOS's bootloader

[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.^{[citations needed]}

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• ReactOS
• DOSEMU
• DOSBox
• Command Prompt
• FreeRTOS
• GRUB
• WinImage
• Arachne — A DOS-based browser included with FreeDOS

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: FreeDOS

• FreeDOS Homepage (official)
• FreeDOS Homepage (SourceForge)
• FD-DOC FreeDOS Documentation Project
• Official Download - FreeDOS 1.0
• Summary of FreeDOS Commands
• FreeDOS help (commands and usage)
• Virtual Machine in Java with FreeDOS
• How to Create a BootableFreeDOS Floppy Disk
• FreeDOS on a USB Flash Drive
• Install FreeDOS without any removable media.
• Virtual Machine for Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 with FreeDOS 1.0 O.S. (Spanish)

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