FreeDOS is an open source DOS-compatible operating system that you can use to play classic DOS games, run legacy business software, or develop embedded systems. Any program that works on MS-DOS should also run on FreeDOS.
It doesn’t cost anything to download and use FreeDOS. You can also share FreeDOS for others to enjoy! And you can view and edit our source code, because all FreeDOS programs are distributed under the GNU General Public License or a similar open source software license.
You can play your favorite DOS games on FreeDOS. And there are a lot of great classic games to play: Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Commander Keen, Rise of the Triad, Jill of the Jungle, Duke Nukem, and many others!
Need to recover data from an old business program? Or maybe you need to run a report from your old finance system? Just install your legacy software under FreeDOS, and you’ll be good to go!
Many embedded systems run on DOS, although modern systems may instead run on Linux. If you support an older embedded system, you might be running DOS. And FreeDOS can fit in very well.
The FreeDOS Project turns 25 years old in June 2019! So we've made a special anniversary t-shirt for the occasion. Available in mens and womens styles, but you can also transfer the design to other products on Zazzle, like stickers or coffee mugs or hats. If you prefer a different color t-shirt, you can change that too. You can find them in our FreeDOS @ Zazzle store. Direct links are: mens t-shirt + womens t-shirt.
We've mentioned this project before: If you want to create some stuff for DOS but you did only web programming so far, try DOjS - a javasctipt interpreter for DOS. It supports sound (digitized and FM syntesis) and graphics (JS canvas, BMP support). You can find it on Github. From the same project, jSH is now also for text mode only. For now, jSH comes only with a single bigger example: JsCommander. A minimal file manager in the style of the well known Norton Commander. Find it also on Github.
Minibox is a project to give you small Linux commands for resource limited systems. Minibox includes simple versions of beep, cat, cd, clear, cp, date, echo, help, ls, mkdir, mv, pwd, rm, rmdir, sh, and time. Ercan has released version 0.5 of Minibox with a few minor updates. The biggest change is dual-licensing GNU GPL 2 and GNU GPL 3. You can find Minibox at Github and at Gitlab.
June is FreeDOS celebration month! I've posted an article on the FreeDOS Blog about early FreeDOS history. There's lots more history to share, and over the next month I hope to write about FreeDOS history and various milestones. Please join me in making June our FreeDOS celebration month!
If you're a JavaScript programmer, you may be interested in this. DOjS is a JavaScript-able canvas with WAV and MIDI sound support for systems running MS-DOS, FreeDOS or any DOS based Windows (like 95, 98, ME). It also has a p5js compatibility mode where some of the functions of p5js are available and scripts can have a similar structure to Processing sketches. Version 0.96 is now available. There were small fixes all over the place and a big crash when using fonts was fixed. You can find it at Githib: https://github.com/SuperIlu/DOjS
Also: Check out jSH, a script interpreter for DOS based operating systems like MS-DOS, FreeDOS or any DOS based Windows (like 95, 98, ME). The focus is on file io and text mode user interfaces. jSH is a side project to DOjS, also by SuperIlu. You can find jSH on Github: https://github.com/SuperIlu/jSH
TK Chia recently announced an updated version of the gcc-ia16 toolchain. There is now a new release of FreeDOS packages for gcc-ia16, with several neat features: - The malloc memory allocator in the Newlib C library now uses less heap memory (thanks to Bart Oldeman) - Some experimental features have been added: A new -mdpmiable option will produce MS-DOS programs which try to run themselves in protected mode using the DOS Protected Mode Interface (DPMI), and you can now more easily cross-compile programs for the Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset (ELKS) operating system. You can find the new gcc-ia16 at Github, tag 20190520.