Welcome to FreeDOS

Bob Smith of Sudley Place Software has released the source code of 386MAX and related tools under the GNU GPL! 386MAX is a computer memory manager for DOS, and has two neat features: 1. 386MAX supports the Global EMM Import Specification (GEMMIS), which allows Windows 3.x to start in 386 Enhanced mode, even when the EMM manager is loaded. 2. 386MAX supports the same I/O port trapping API through INT 2fh that EMM386 provides. See also DPMIONE, a standalone DPMI 1.0 Host, which is also under the GNU GPL. Bob also has a protected mode debugger called 386SWAT, and a linker called QLINK written specifically to link 386SWAT. Thanks Bob!

PMODE/W is a DOS extender for use with the Watcom C/C++ compiler. It is designed to be a fairly functional drop-in replacement for DOS4GW.EXE. From the website: "Whereas DOS/4GW requires a stub and an large external extender, PMODE/W is the stub and extender in one. The generated executable contains the PMODE/W extender within it as the stub. When run, PMODE/W will take care of setting up the system and executing the protected mode portion of the program." PMODE/W is released under the MIT license. Download version 1.33 from the PMODE/W website.

Darik Horn has announced a version of 7-Zip 24.09+2 for DOS with several enhancements and improvements. This version supports automatic dictionary sizing, and provides a new 7zm.exe mini build that can create 7z files on a computer with a 386 cpu and 3 megabytes of memory. Improvements include LFN detection and SFN globbing. Darik also notes that "7-Zip was expressing bugs in DOS/32A and the OpenWatcom runtime that were resolved, in part, by using the Causeway extender." You can get the new 7-Zip 24.09+2 for DOS at the retro7zip GitHub.

DosView is an image file viewer and converter for DOS. DosView can read 16 different file formats (and write to 12 image formats) including BMP, PCX, JPG, PNG, WEBP, TIFF, and GIF. DosView is available under the MIT license, and libraries under other open source licenses. SuperIlu recently updated DosView to version 1.7 to fix several bugs: this has increased support for BMP images, and detects out of memory errors. Download the new version from the DosView 1.7 release at GitHub.

Before that, SuperIlu released DosView 1.6 as a minor update. Download this version from the DosView 1.6 release at GitHub.

The official FreeDOS distribution has a slow update cycle because FreeDOS is already pretty complete. We released FreeDOS 1.3 in February 2022. But we've continued to work on it behind the scenes, including the monthly "test releases" with all the latest updates. And thanks to everyone who contributes to FreeDOS, we are excited to share the FreeDOS 1.4 Release Candidate 1 is now available! This has a ton of new changes and fixes since FreeDOS 1.3. This includes updates to the installer and version updates on many programs including fdisk, format, jemm, ldebug, bwbasic, dojs, dog, nasm, curl, mkeyb, edlin, blocek, htmlhelp, fdnet, more, fdimples, .. the list goes on - read the change log for the complete list. These updates should address many annoying bugs that folks have reported since version 1.3.

Please help test the new FreeDOS 1.4 release candidate. Download FreeDOS 1.4 RC1 and test it out, and report any bugs. We look forward to testing the new version, and including more updates for FreeDOS 1.4 RC2 next month.

Jeremy Davis and others have been working to update FreeCOM (the FreeDOS command.com shell) and have released FreeCOM version 0.86. Thanks to everyone who has helped with this version - including Jeremy (maintainer) and contributors TK Chia, Bitigchi, Andrewbird, Joshux, Boeckmann, and Jmalak. This has a bunch of new fixes and additions, too many to list here - please see the release notes for full details. You'll also find a bunch of translations including Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Ukr. For each language supported, a zip archive is provided with the following versions: xms-swap with XMS-only swap support (for computers with lots of memory and an XMS manager), kswap for basic swapping support (for 8086/8088 computers), plainedt without command line editing, and debug with debug information added.

We've also mirrored FreeCOM 0.86 in the FreeDOS Files Archive at Ibiblio, under /dos/command/0.86. To install this on your existing FreeDOS system, unzip the file for your preferred language. To test it, just run the command.com you want to use. To make it a permanent replacement for your FreeDOS system, edit the SHELL= line in your fdconfig.sys to point to the new version.