Jerome Shidel shared this update and request about translating LSM data files. (LSM files are small data files that describe a package in the FreeDOS distribution.) Jerome writes: "Thanks to one of the community members, we now have translations in French and Turkish on hand for all of the FreeDOS packages in the repository. These translations will definitely make it into the upcoming 1.3 release and be supported by FDIMPLES for package browsing and installation. Eventually, I’d like to see the online software repository support native language pages as well. But, that will probably have to wait a bit. If you would like to see support for any additional languages, please don’t hesitate to provide them. I know it is quite a bit of work. But, I think the non-English-speaking users will appreciate the effort."

To prevent duplicate effort, let us know what language you are going to provide. Please send an email to the freedos-devel email list. Then, fetch the latest package list CSV from the official software repository. Simply translate the Description, Summary and Keyword fields. When you're finished, let us know. We will be glad to include them. Just remember, the deadline for language submissions will be October 31.

Thanks to everyone's bug reports from pre5, Bart Oldeman has been updating FreeCOM, the FreeDOS command.com shell. Bart writes "thanks again everybody for the feedback. I now updated the prerelease to pre6 with mostly bug fixes and one build system change, most importantly: * Enable reporting of directory sizes up to 2TB (with Tom Ehlert) * Enable cross-compilation from 64-bit Windows using Open Watcom * Fix swapping of strings to XMS for GCC and OW versions (with TK Chia) * Fix carry flag handling on input to DOS memory allocation functions for GCC and OW (with TK Chia) * Fix compilation errors with LFN disabled * GCC inline assembly fixes (TK Chia) * shift: use correct context, Fixes SF Bug #155 (Wolfram Sang) * Fix buffer overflow with alias expansion, introduced in 0.84-pre3. ... I hope this is finally stable enough for me to remove the pre6 and release this as 0.84." You can download it here: FreeCOM 0.84-pre6 at Github

If you're a developer who prefers the GNU compiler, DJGPP recently released a port of GCC-8.2.0. GCC used to stand for the GNU C Compiler, but since the compiler supports several other languages aside from C, it now stands for the GNU Compiler Collection. Read the announcement on comp.os.msdos.djgpp. For a "brief" summary of some of the huge number of improvements in GCC 8, read the GCC 8 Changes, New Features, and Fixes page. Download the latest DJGPP release from Getting djgpp, but you may want to use the Zip picker.

Celebrate FreeDOS with this free 24th anniversary e-book! Includes how-tos on installing FreeDOS, essays about running DOS applications, a history of FreeDOS, and quick-reference guides to DOS commands and batch programming. Using FreeDOS is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC BY 4.0). Download Using FreeDOS in EPUB or PDF format on our FreeDOS e-books page. (You can also download last year's anniversary ebook, 23 Years of FreeDOS.) Also planning a print version soon, via our publishing partner Lulu, for those interested in a bound copy.

A popular web forum for many FreeDOS users is the DOS Ain't Dead forum, hosted by BTTR Software. This forum evolved from a standard support forum for our customers to a very popular forum for all users running DOS-compatible operating systems on 80x86-based computers. The forum often includes FreeDOS topics. A while ago, the DOS Ain't Dead forum went offline. As of yesterday, the website and forum is back! Thank you Robert Riebisch and everyone else at BTTR Software for this resurrection.