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FreeDOS's Linux Roots

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Re: FreeDOS's Linux Roots

#51

Post by tracker1 »

mey wrote: post #16
Something1234 wrote: post #14

What can I do that is moderately interesting with freedos? I've downloaded it a couple of times, but I never found anything useful to do with it. I'm sure I could play some games, or something. I really want to actually learn it.

Unless you want to work specifically with FreeDOS, you might look at DOSBox instead. It's a MS-DOS emulator that runs in user space, rather than running as the OS, thus a lower barrier to entry.

Depends on your needs... if you can use dosemu+freedos, it's usually faster than dosbox's overhead. DOSBox is great for when you have a DOS gui, but if you don't need it, it's more overhead. Also dosemu+freedos can work headless.

Aside: most of my interest here is classic BBS software and doors.

Re: FreeDOS's Linux Roots

#52

Post by jboles »

londons_explore wrote: post #29
vertex-four wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot of firmware flashing stuff that runs on DOS, because it’s easier to have direct access to hardware without the OS trying to access that hardware simultaneously. The alternative is correctly disabling the device under Windows/Linux/whatever, flashing the firmware, and re-enabling it, which is a process likely to have bugs and potentially result in bricking the device. Modern operating systems are big and…

Even DOS doesn't work for most modern hardware. Can't have direct blueray drive access if there is no way to initialize the SATA controller...

Not entirely true -- this is the case if the drive is configured as "Enhanced" or "RAID" or "AHCI" in the BIOS/EFI. There's typically a "Legacy" mode which will make the device visible to DOS (and indistinguishable from any other ATA controller).

Re: FreeDOS's Linux Roots

#53

Post by Koshkin »

Something1234 wrote: post #14

What can I do that is moderately interesting with freedos? I've downloaded it a couple of times, but I never found anything useful to do with it. I'm sure I could play some games, or something. I really want to actually learn it.

You can learn to code like it's 1980s!

Re: FreeDOS's Linux Roots

#54

Post by Koshkin »

vocatus_gate wrote: post #23
jamesgeck0 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can compute like a PC user in the 1980s. There are various word processors, database utilities, and programming languages available. There are even old school networking tools for newsreading, IRC, telnet, and gopher. I remember "DOS for Dummies" (the seminal Dummies book) being helpful when I was starting out; you can probably find a used copy for the cost of shipping at this point.

"butwhy.gif"

Little or no overhead (almost bare-metal).

Re: FreeDOS's Linux Roots

#55

Post by Lowkeyloki »

One of the comments on the article proper makes me so sad. It basically says "What a monumental waste of effort. You should have spent your time improving Linux and not recreating DOS."

It's fine if you don't get the allure of this project. But to presume to tell someone how they should spend their own time is ridiculous to me. The creator of FreeDOS set out to do something, succeeded, and enjoyed their time doing it. And this person is telling them they're wrong.

Re: FreeDOS's Linux Roots

#56

Post by Wowfunhappy »

londons_explore wrote: post #29
vertex-four wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot of firmware flashing stuff that runs on DOS, because it’s easier to have direct access to hardware without the OS trying to access that hardware simultaneously. The alternative is correctly disabling the device under Windows/Linux/whatever, flashing the firmware, and re-enabling it, which is a process likely to have bugs and potentially result in bricking the device. Modern operating systems are big and…

Even DOS doesn't work for most modern hardware. Can't have direct blueray drive access if there is no way to initialize the SATA controller...

Well, all I can tell you is that it worked.

Re: FreeDOS's Linux Roots

#57

Post by jdboyd »

farmerbb wrote: post #28
jdboyd wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that when we get computers that are pure EFI and completely free of legacy BIOS, it will be possible to use something like SeaBIOS to continue to add back BIOS compatibility for use with tools like FreeDOS.

I've tried booting FreeDOS on my Chromebook with SeaBIOS installed, and it just does not handle it well. The system will completely lock up when running most programs or even just by hitting the Tab key. FreeDOS doesn't even boot unless I have it skip loading AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS on startup.

Thanks for posting that. Sounds like SeaBIOS or FreeDOS.

Re: FreeDOS's Linux Roots

#58

Post by nobleach »

agumonkey wrote: post #45
nobleach wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I did. That stark blue TP7 editor is a thing of beauty.

oh yeah 600kB of pure joy taught me one thing though, having a hard coded IDE hurts. I missed emacs so damn much..

Unfortunately, at that point in my life, Vim/Emacs were completely unknown to me. When I hit my 20's and got stuck in Vim, everything changed.
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