TK Chia has been working to port the GNU C Compiler to DOS, using the ia16 instruction set. That means you can use the GNU C compiler to make 16-bit DOS programs (previously, if you wanted to use GNU C, you used the DJGPP port, but the compiled DOS programs required a 32-bit CPU; this compilers programs that run on 16-bit.) TK Chia recently uploaded a new, updated package set for the gcc-ia16 toolchain at Github. Features in this updated gcc-ia16 toolchain include: * fixes a number of bugs which was causing the compiler to produce incorrect or suboptimal code (thanks to Bart Oldeman) * adds a new experimental function calling convention, regparmcall * adds a number of features to the GCC internal runtime library (libgcc) and the C runtime library (newlib) to better detect and report program logic errors, especially memory corruption errors.

Links is a text-based web browser that provides basic web navigation from DOS. Version 2.17 is out. This version features a bunch of fixes, including: -Fix verifying SSL certificates for numeric IPv6 addresses - Add bold and monospaced Turkish letter 'i' without a dot - It fixes SSL on systems with old 16-bit TCP/IP stack - Support mouse scroll wheel in textarea. You can download the DOS binary (exe) and source code (tar.gz)

Microsoft has released the source code to MS-DOS 1.5 and 2.0 under an open source software license, now available from the MS-DOS repo at Github. As Microsoft notes on their Github page, "These are the same files originally shared at the Computer History Museum on March 25th 2014" and "All files within this repo are released under the MIT (OSI) License." This is significant, because the source code published via the Museum in 2014 was under a "look but do not touch" license. This re-release places the source code under a recognized open source license. The MIT license (also called the "Expat" license) is compatible with the GNU GPL.

These are very old versions of MS-DOS that do not include more advanced features including CD-ROM support, networking, '386 support, etc. For example, MS-DOS 2.0 was the first version to support directories and pipes/redirection. So from a practical side, FreeDOS is unlikely to reuse this code for any modern features anyway. But for basic features or weird edge cases, we might now be able to reference this code to improve compatibility in FreeDOS.

Ercan has released FreeDOS TUI Shell version 0.2. FreeDOS TUI Shell is similar to DOSSHELL, and includes a file manager and running other applications. Changes included in version 0.2: - Disabled menuitem foreground color have changed to grey on "FDOSTUI.INI". But, it seems red. (Could be another bug of FDOSTUI library?) - Changed default showing archive items and readonly items. - Fixed popup input of run command not canceling bug. - Add pause after running command. - Fixed newline bug of some files. You can find it at Github or at GitLab.

Last month, we moved web hosting to a new provider. Last weekend, we moved DNS hosting to the new provider, too. Unfortunately, at that same time, the DNS entry for the FreeDOS wiki (wiki.freedos.org) got pointed to the new web host. And the wiki isn't there yet (there's some work that needs to be done to migrate the database, assets, etc - this was planned for October). I'm working on it with the provider, but in the meantime the FreeDOS wiki is temporarily offline. Update: It's fixed. The DNS change needs to propagate - so if you get a Dreamhost error page when you access the wiki, try again later.