FreeDOS aims to be a complete, free, 100% MS-DOS compatible operating system.

Welcome to FreeDOS

FreeDOS is a free DOS-compatible operating system for IBM-PC compatible systems. FreeDOS is made of up many different, separate programs that act as "packages" to the overall FreeDOS Project.

These days, there are three main uses for FreeDOS:

  1. Running classic DOS games
  2. Running business software that only supports DOS
  3. Supporting embedded DOS systems, such as a computerized cash register or till

FreeDOS should run on any standard PC, but if you are new to DOS, we recommend you use a PC emulator to install and boot FreeDOS. You can find PC emulators for all computer platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac.) You can even run FreeDOS using a PC emulator written in Java, right in your web browser!

FreeDOS is open source software; you can view and edit our source code. Most FreeDOS programs are distributed under the GNU General Public License ("GNU GPL"). Because we are open source / Free software, FreeDOS would not exist were it not for all the people who contribute to it. Even if you don't write code, you can help out the FreeDOS Project by submitting comments and bug reports.

We welcome new users to FreeDOS. You can contribute to the FreeDOS Project by downloading our latest release and telling us what you think. We have a bug tracking system that helps you report problems and submit requests, and otherwise tell us how to improve FreeDOS. By participating in the development and debugging process, you help everyone.

Now is a great time to get involved in FreeDOS - we are starting to plan the FreeDOS 1.1 distribution! The FreeDOS 1.0 (2006) release was very successful. It was a solid distro that was a good, working replacement for MS-DOS for many users. I'd like to see us continue that with a FreeDOS 1.1. I don't think we need to look at sweeping changes - but there are a few nice additions that should be there:

FDUPDATE (FreeDOS Updater.)
Mateusz's excellent update utility can help to keep your system current with the latest releases of FreeDOS packages. Having an auto-updater should help to reduce reports of software not working, yet 2 or 3 new releases of that software package have been released since the distro. A while back, I promised to make changes to the online FreeDOS Software List and the FreeDOS Files Repository (see Technotes 232 & 233.) I'm still ready and willing to make those changes on the web site, if we can commit to a FreeDOS 1.1 distro by end of 2008.
An updated Install program.
An updated Install program would present a better first impression to new FreeDOS users. The current Install program is basically UI improvements to the originally text-mode, scroll-from-bottom Install program I wrote back in March 1998. Our Install program definitely needs a facelift. It should still run in text-mode, since FreeDOS is really a command-line OS anyway. Aitor has been updating the DFLAT+ library used in FreeDOS EDIT, and I think this library would make a good base for a new Install program. Not looking for new functionality, just a refresh on the Install program.
An optional floppy-only "Base" install.
This could be a 1.44MB emergency boot floppy image (like BALDER, or ODIN before it) with just the essentials from the "Base" set. Or maybe it's a multi-floppy (3 disks?) install of everything from "Base".

For FreeDOS 1.1, no major changes. Let's worry about other, larger changes in later releases.

Feel free to respond in this thread or to email me directly.

Latest News

NASM - Netwide Assembler
2008-08-17 21:07 -
The latest stable version of NASM is 2.03.01 - released back in June (sorry, I'm late in posting about it.) NASM was originally developed by Simon Tatham and Julian Hall, and is now maintained by a team led by H. Peter Anvin. The NASM team are actively looking for more developers. In particular, they really need a maintainer for the MacOS X (Mach-O) backend! Please volunteer to help at http://nasm.sourceforge.net/
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New 4DOS (Version 7.74)
2008-08-17 21:03 -
It's been really encouraging to see such rapid development continue on 4DOS. This has probably been my most favorite DOS application. Version 7.74 was released a few days ago. New in this release: # History log no longer contains the line "AUTOEXEC" # Added @FILEREADB function # If length = –1, @FILEWRITEB input data is series of ASCII values # Updated help file for the above changes. Also, please update your bookmarks with the new URL - http://4dos.zzl.org/
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DUGL 1.12 (DOS Ultimate Game Library)
2008-08-17 20:53 -
The DOS Ultimate Game Library released 1.12 on 9 August. New in this version: - Added to Poly16 the support of POLY16_TEXT_BLND and POLY16_MASK_TEXT_BLND allowing to draw a texture mapped poly blended with a color with 32 level of blending. Allowing flat lightening, fog, shineness ... - Fixed a bug with POLY16_MASK_TEXT which was not always masked. - Added ConvSurf8ToSurf16Pal allowing to direct convert a 8bpp surf to a 16bpp without a lookup table. - Added full support for uncompressed BMP format with : LoadMemBMP, LoadBMP, SaveMemBMP, SaveBMP, SizeSaveBMP, LoadMemBMP16, LoadBMP16, SaveMemBMP16, SaveBMP16 and SizeSaveBMP16. More examples and maybe a small (silent) game will be released soon :-) http://dugl.50webs.com/
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Vim (Vi IMproved) version 7.2
2008-08-17 20:49 -
This is a minor release of Vim. In the 15 months since Vim 7.1 many bugs were fixed and runtime files have been added and updated. There are also security improvements, therefore it's a good idea to upgrade. The main new feature since 7.1 is floating point support. You can use it in the Vim script language to add up a list of amounts, for example. Once you have installed Vim 7.2 you can find details about the changes since Vim 7.1 with ":help version-7.2". Find it at http://www.vim.org/ and http://www.vim.org/mirrors.php
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UMBPCI V3.77
2008-08-17 20:45 -
UMBPCI is a hardware-UMB-driver for DOS and Win95/98. UMBPCI extends the HIMEM.SYS of DOS or Win95/98 by the function 'Request XMS UMB' (These are the 160 Bytes which stay in memory). That's the same thing that EMM386 does, if you load it with the parameter 'noems' or 'ram'. Version 3.77 (adding support for SiS 671) is available from http://www.uwe-sieber.de/umbpci_e.html
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FreeBASIC 0.20.0 Beta
2008-08-17 20:40 -
There's a new release of FreeBASIC available for download. In this release: AndAlso/OrElse short-circuiting operators and many other improvements. Most important changes: * AndAlso/OrElse short-circuiting operators * updated FreeImage support for v3.10 * BLOAD now supports 15, 16, and 32-bpp BMP files, alpha in 32-bpp BMP files (BITMAPV4 / V5HEADER only), arbitrary BI_BITFIELDS bitfields, and OS/2 BMP files * Many improvements to gfx functions (SCREEN, PCOPY, LINE, CIRCLE) * Many improvements to run-time functions (VAL, STR, GET#, LINE INPUT, LEN, DIR) * improved dialect support (removed dialect dependencies from the rtlib, added IMAGEINFO, and #lang directive) * GOSUB now allowed in fblite (with OPTION GOSUB) * SSE/SSE2 support for floating point math (using -fpu sse command line option). Please see the changelog for a complete list of updates. http://www.freebasic.net/index.php/details?page=news&category=rls&id=14
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Free Pascal 2.2.2 release (DOS)
2008-08-13 20:49 -
Marco van de Voort pointed us to an announcement by the Free Pascal team. Version 2.2.2 is ready for download! Version 2.2.2 is the new stable version. It contains mostly bugfixes, and selected backported features. No major new features are introduced. You can grab it at http://www.freepascal.org/download.var
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No more MPXPLAY for DOS
2008-08-01 22:26 -
According to a message posted in the MPXPLAY forum (https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=5128817) looks like 1.56b2 will be the last version of MPXPLAY to support DOS. This is too bad, I know a lot of FreeDOS users will be disappointed by this news. Current version as of now is v1.55. Watch http://mpxplay.sourceforge.net/ for updates.
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Recovering lost data with TestDisk
2008-08-01 21:47 -
TestDisk got mentioned on the mailing list as a neat tool to help recover lost data, like if you accidentally blow away your partition table. Thought I'd pass along a link. From the web site: "TestDisk is OpenSource software and is licensed under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL). TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy." http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
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New TEE 2.0.3
2008-08-01 21:42 -
Alexis Malozemoff has released a new version of FreeDOS TEE: "The biggest change is the addition of a German translation (by Achim Sondermann), and HELP html files (also by Achim). Besides that there are minor fixes, such as better error reporting. I also fixed the zip file as you mentioned before." TEE203.ZIP is on Alexis's web site at http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~amaloz/FreeDOS/TEE - and has been mirrored to http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/file/tee/
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