FreeDOS Project turns 30 years old!

You can also download this press kit at www.freedos.org/presskit.zip

The FreeDOS Project will turn 30 years old on June 29, 2024. This is a long time for any open source project, especially one like FreeDOS.

FreeDOS is an open source DOS-compatible operating system that you can use to play classic DOS games, run legacy business software, or write new DOS programs. Any program that works on MS-DOS should also run on FreeDOS.

And yes, lots of people really do run FreeDOS in 2024. There's a sizable community of retro computing enthusiasts who like to run classic operating systems like DOS. You can find many people online who restore old computers and put FreeDOS on them.

But there's more than just the throwback aspect to FreeDOS. One thing I like about FreeDOS (or any DOS, but FreeDOS especially) is that it has so few "moving parts" that it's very easy for beginner computer users to understand how a computer works.

And of course, there were just so many great DOS games from the 1980s and 1990s. And just because these games are old doesn't mean they aren't fun to play; I love going back to play classic shareware DOS games like DOOM, or Jill of the Jungle, or Commander Keen. These are still excellent in 2024.

For more information, please visit our website at www.freedos.org

Quick facts

FreeDOS (June 29, 1994) is just a few days older than Amazon (July 5, 1994)
FreeDOS (June 29, 1994) is just a few weeks younger than Geek Squad (June 16, 1994)
FreeDOS (1994) is older than eBay (1995)
Older than the Firefox web browser (2004) or Netscape (December, 1994)
Older than anything "web" (the World Wide Web "explosion" started in late 1994 or early 1995, after Netscape became popular)

A brief history

(by Jim Hall)

I used DOS when I was growing up. Our first computer was actually an Apple II clone, where I first learned BASIC programming—but we later upgraded to a PC running DOS. And I thought DOS was great. DOS had a lot of great applications, but it also had a command line that let me string other commands together to do new things.

I relied on DOS and DOS applications as a junior high student, then as a high school student, then as an undergraduate student. I learned C programming and created my own programs that enhanced the DOS command line. And I used powerful DOS applications like WordPerfect for writing papers and Lotus 1-2-3 to analyze my lab data from physics classes. I later discovered shareware and replaced Lotus 1-2-3 with As-Easy-As, and WordPerfect with Galaxy Write.

I used Windows as a university student—but if you remember Windows 3.1, it wasn't that great. Windows was basically a DOS shell, and I found it was less powerful than using DOS plus a file manager. I thought Windows was slow and clumsy, and one poorly behaved Windows program could crash everything. So I avoided Windows.

In Spring 1994, I read articles in computer magazines about the next version of Windows. Microsoft said the next Windows version wouldn't need DOS at all. Effectively, the next Windows would mean the end of DOS. And if Windows "3.2" or "4.0" would be anything like WIndows 3.1, I didn't want to use it.

I had been dual-booting my computer at home with DOS and Linux since 1993. I thought Linux was pretty powerful, but it didn't run my DOS applications. I was impressed that developers from all over the world came together to write this very powerful Unix-like system, and I thought "could we do the same with DOS?" I asked around on a discussion board called Usenet if anyone was working on an open source DOS like that. The answer was "No, but that's a good idea—and you should do it." So I decided to do it. On June 29, 1994, I announced a project that would become FreeDOS:

A few months ago, I posted articles relating to starting a public domain version of DOS. The general support for this at the time was strong, and many people agreed with the statement, "start writing!" So, I have…

Announcing the first effort to produce a PD-DOS. I have written up a "manifest" describing the goals of such a project and an outline of the work, as well as a "task list" that shows exactly what needs to be written. I'll post those here, and let discussion follow.

Folks contacted me pretty quickly, and in a few weeks we had collected a bunch of DOS utilities that reproduced regular DOS. I contributed my own programs that enhanced the DOS command line, and others did the same. Tim Norman wrote our first COMMAND.COM (the shell where you type commands). Someone put me in touch with Pat Villani, who contributed a DOS kernel he had written to support his embedded systems development.

Over the years, Bart Oldeman, Tom Ehlert, John Price, and Jeremy Davis stepped in to maintain the kernel. And lots of developers volunteered to write other parts of FreeDOS; thanks to M. Hannibal Toal, Eric Auer, Aitor Santamaria, Tom, Paul Vojta, Joe Cosentino, Shaun, Till, Martin, Arkady, Bernd, Charles, Eduardo, Rene, Dave, Mike, Imre, Louis, Fritz, Jim Tabor, Jason, Jerome Shidel, Ron, Lucho, ror4, Steffen, Wilhelm, Rugxulo, Mateusz Viste, Gregory Pietsch, Ralf Quint, and the many, many others (I'm sure I've missed some people in that list) who created and maintained programs, fixed bugs, wrote documentation, translated messages to other languages, … and did all the hard work of making FreeDOS happen. They are the ones who keep FreeDOS going. I'm just the "cheerleader."

Questions and answers

I will provide longer answers in email interviews, but here are some quick answers to common questions:

Do you run FreeDOS to do real work? Yes and no. My desktop PC runs Linux, and I do all my work there. But I boot into FreeDOS every day to do something, whether that's playing a DOS game to relax, or writing some code, or testing a program someone sent me.

How do you run FreeDOS? I boot FreeDOS in a virtual machine that I run on my Linux system; that way, I can quickly run FreeDOS to do a thing, and not interrupt my other work. Using a virtual machine also makes it handy to create screenshots. I like the QEMU virtual machine, but VirtualBox is also popular.

What are your favorite DOS games? It depends on the day. Right now, I'm re-playing Commander Keen. I recently just played through Jill of the Jungle. My favorite DOS game of all time is TIE Fighter, where you piloted various TIE craft in missions for the Empire; it was just really fun.

What are your favorite DOS applications? My favorite DOS application of all time is As-Easy-As (TRIUS Inc). It's a shareware spreadsheet that works like Lotus 1-2-3 (because it's "as easy as 1-2-3"). I used As-Easy-As when I was an undergraduate physics student, to analyze physics lab data. I'm still impressed how modern As-Easy-As feels, and how much As-Easy-As can do compared to more modern spreadsheets like Excel or Google Sheets, if you don't mind the DOS interface (and I don't). TRIUS released As-Easy-As for free in 2011. My favorite word processor right now is Word for DOS 5.5; it's a really modern feeling word processor, and it's not bad if you want a distraction-free word processor. Microsoft released Word for DOS 5.5 for free on their website, but I can't find a download for it right now.

Images

Here are the official FreeDOS Project logos and branding. Feel free to use these in your articles or other publications. All images are Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike. Preferred attribution is: "The FreeDOS Project" with a link back to our website: https://www.freedos.org/.

Current FreeDOS logo

Color FreeDOS fish mascot

Color FreeDOS fish mascot, with text

Black and white FreeDOS fish mascot

Black and white FreeDOS fish mascot, with text

Original FreeDOS logo from 1994

Screenshots

Feel free to use these screenshots of FreeDOS apps and games in your articles. All images are also Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike. Preferred attribution as above.