FreeDOS and FreeBSD prove old code never dies, just gets nifty updates
- Reference: 1719930851
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/07/02/freedos_30_freebsd_31/
- Source link:
Both projects celebrated their anniversaries recently and both are planning significant changes in their next releases. Project founder Jim Hall – who [1]we interviewed last year – announced what was then called PD-DOS on the comp.os.msdos.apps newsgroup in [2]June 1994 , and over the next few years it gathered contributions and grew. As [3]Hall recounts , different parts came from different people – the kernel from Pat Villani, the command interpreter by Tim Norman, and many other contributors.
Back in 2022, we [4]looked at version 1.3 . For now, that remains the current official version, but there are several interim testing releases every year. As [5]Hall puts it, "Jerome Shidel is our distribution wrangler," and Shidel released [6]version T2407 yesterday, which you can [7]download from iBiblio .
[8]ArcaOS 5.1 gives vintage OS/2 a UEFI facelift for the 21st century
[9]Founder of FreeDOS recounts the story so far, and the future
[10]The many derivatives of the CP/M operating system
[11]Running DOS on 64-bit Windows and Linux: Just because you can
There's still life in the DOS world. The classic [12]GEOS graphical desktop , which started out on the Commodore 64 and later moved to the PC and was variously renamed GeoWorks, Breadbox Ensemble, and other names, is now FOSS and you can [13]get it from GitHub – as you can the [14]386Max memory manager whose author made it GPL in 2022. Lots of other legitimate, legal DOS freeware and FOSS apps can be found in the [15]FreeDOS repo including Microsoft Word, Protext, DataPerfect, VisiCalc, Adobe Acrobat Reader, and more. For now, FreeDOS still can't run on UEFI systems, and it still can't run Windows 3.x, but the latter at least is being worked on and may come in version 1.4.
FreeBSD is 31
The FreeBSD project is just a year older, and it too is going strong, despite the [16]recent departure of TrueNAS . This year, [17]FreeBSD Day marked the project's 31st anniversary, following a few weeks behind the 2024 [18]FreeBSD Developer Summit in Ottawa. The FreeBSD Foundation has a [19]list of highlights with links to videos of the talks.
The current version is [20]FreeBSD 14.1 but planning is under way for what will go into FreeBSD 15, which [21]includes a plan for a graphical installation program. There's more info about this in the [22]latest quarterly status report . ®
[23]
Get our [24]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/18/retro_tech_week_freedos/
[2] https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.msdos.apps/c/oQmT4ETcSzU/m/O1HR8PE2u-EJ?pli=1
[3] https://allthingsopen.org/articles/30-years-freedos
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/23/freedos_13/
[5] https://sourceforge.net/articles/freedos-30th-anniversary-interview-with-jim-hall-from-the-freedos-project/
[6] https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/test/readme.txt
[7] https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/test/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/04/arcaos_51/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/18/retro_tech_week_freedos/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/04/the_many_derivatives_of_cpm/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/28/friday_foss_fest_running_dos/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2002/01/31/geoworks_throws_in_towel/
[13] https://github.com/bluewaysw/pcgeos
[14] https://github.com/sudleyplace/386MAX
[15] https://clasqm.github.io/freedos-repo/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/18/truenas_abandons_freebsd/
[17] https://freebsdfoundation.org/freebsd-day/
[18] https://freebsdfoundation.org/news-and-events/event-calendar/may-2024-freebsd-developer-summit/
[19] https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/highlights-from-the-freebsd-developer-summit-2024-innovations-and-future-directions/
[20] https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/freebsd-14-1-whats-new-and-how-did-we-get-here/
[21] https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/april-2024-software-development-update/
[22] https://www.freebsd.org/status/report-2024-01-2024-03/#_graphical_installer_for_freebsd
[23] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZoQkHpkH@veyFgedFP@@6wAAAMI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[24] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
[Author here]
Fairly comparable to Linux with the current X.org, I expect. I believe there are nVidia binary drivers, but I lack any nVidia (or AMD/ATI) hardware recent enough to test that.
How long is a piece of string? The only sensible answer to that question and yours is "it depends".
This link should help: https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/x11/#x-graphic-card-drivers
It does better than Windows but is on par with Linux (mostly due to using almost identical upstream drm/kms stack with an abstraction layer).
OpenBSD tends to fair quite a bit better than both with older hardware. I notice my S3 Savage and Intel GMA 915 to be functional.
Why?
Genuine question, other than hobby and / or educational reasons, is there any commercial or other need for these projects?
Re: Why?
FreeBSD is a bomb-proof OS that's used for a significant chunk of the planet's core Internet services: DNS, web, email, etc. And it doesn't run systemd.
Re: Why?
[Author here]
Need for FreeBSD, the other commenter has already given.
For FreeDOS? What's wrong with just for fun?
It can run most old DOS games and apps, which is a *big* back catalogue. It is more current than than MS-DOS or PC-DOS, can run on some more modern kit, access more RAM, etc. (It's a 16-bit OS with a 32-bit memory manager, so 4GB max, though, and one CPU core.) It means there's a modern network-capable DOS for old DOS apps that you might need to run today, and it runs well on very low-end kit that would be unusable with any 21st century OS.
A lot of vendors sell budget laptops with FreeDOS, although that is a cheat: really, it's Debian with some VMs, but it lets them avoid the scary L-word and still ship a FOSS OS.
There's a dissection of HP's "FreeDOS" option here:
https://blog.tmm.cx/2022/05/15/the-very-weird-hewlett-packard-freedos-option/
TL;DR: ancient version of FreeDOS in a QEMU VM on an even more ancient version of Debian.
Re: Why?
We used DOS & dosemu on Linux to run old DOS software (no surprises there...) that is specific to some old ISA cards for controlling hardware.
This has the advantages over actual DOS or Windows 95/98 in having security of any sort, network stability, time-keeping accuracy, etc. It also has advantages over the Windows 32-bit NT series (NT, w2k, XP, 7) in security to a large degree, but in our case you can configure dosemu to "punch through" the usual hardware protection so the DOS software can directly access specific I/O addresses as needed to work with the old hardware.
Yes, we could have re-written the software as a proper Linux driver & application but that would take a lot of time and cost, and end up doing exactly the same job.
BSD? Dying?
Have Netcraft confirmed it?
Yes, I am old.
Anyone knows how compatible FreeBSD is with old video cards?