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Ghastly.
Kind of random, but the article reminded me. I think every pdf should have it's own linux installation. They should role it into the pdf specification. You never know when that might be useful.
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Maybe, but wouldn’t the customer have to know how to run QEMU? I am imagining a customer who wants to just replace an old machine while changing as little as possible.
Since this install is based on QEMU running in Linux, it would not meet that need.
I’m guessing they’re doing this because modern x86 processors can’t boot into BIOS mode anymore (edit: untrue, see reply by dmitrygr). This makes me wonder why they’re even offering FreeDOS as an option when they offer Linux for customers who don’t wish to purchase a Windows license. Maybe they have some sort of contractual obligation with a large customer?
Microsoft has a licensing program for .edu that doesn’t require an “embedded” hardware license. There are also many places using Neverware to provide Chrome desktops while using the some warranty services, etc that they have with PCs.
If you buy alot of computers, you can get desktops crazy cheap. Big enterprise buyers get low-spec desktops for ~$225 without windows or $300 with. If you don’t care about power/footprint, they are the best value thin client. Schools are huge PC buyers, some districts have >300k students, so you’re easily talking 40-70k PCs annually.
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Weird old legacy hardware that only runs on DOS generally requires real-time access to stuff like ISA cards or parallel/serial ports, so this wouldn't work for that use case since the computer doesn't have any of those.
I have a weird old nylon cutting machine connected to a DOS machine over a serial port. It would not work with a USB/RS-232 adaptor?
I can't find a source for it, but my recollection is that MS considers selling a PC with no operating system as encouraging piracy of Windows. So I suspect this option is either due to an agreement with MS, or an overly cautious legal department.
What gets me is... what's the point ? If you don't want to fight MS about selling PCs with no OS, ship some Linux distro. DOS was a nice option when you needed to support bare-metal stuff like flashing the BIOS without a modern OS getting in the way, but I would be shocked if that worked here - basically, I can see reasons to ship DOS, but they're all mutually incompatible with a virtual machine. And if you're going…
Selling it with freedos, you only have to support freedos, and people who buy that option will install something else anyway.
And then there’s another OS: UEFI. Something I recently joked about doing was porting SDL to the UEFI environment and then building DOSBOX for it. I’m sure someone has already done this in some fashion, but the idea was amusing enough for me to genuinely consider it one of these weekends. I guess in that case, though, you can’t really run FreeDOS.
Also, don't forget the Minix running inside a small embedded processor inside your processor or platform controller.
What gets me is... what's the point ? If you don't want to fight MS about selling PCs with no OS, ship some Linux distro. DOS was a nice option when you needed to support bare-metal stuff like flashing the BIOS without a modern OS getting in the way, but I would be shocked if that worked here - basically, I can see reasons to ship DOS, but they're all mutually incompatible with a virtual machine. And if you're going…
HP ships Ubuntu in thin clients by default. So the fact they are doing this implies some specific reason.
I can't find a source for it, but my recollection is that MS considers selling a PC with no operating system as encouraging piracy of Windows. So I suspect this option is either due to an agreement with MS, or an overly cautious legal department.
Some countries also prohibit selling laptops without any OSs because they're unusable in that way, so this is a way to sell a technically "fully usable laptop" for people who'll install linux anyway.
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Some countries also prohibit selling laptops without any OSs because they're unusable in that way, so this is a way to sell a technically "fully usable laptop" for people who'll install linux anyway.
which leaves the question of why going through the hassle of creating this mess instead of just Linux.
And the FreeDOS just works. Doesn't do much, but what it does, it does well.