Keeping DOS alive and kicking with open source

[Blizzardnh]

DOS: the Disk Operating System. For many of us whose computer coming-of-age story spanned across the 80s and 90s, we remember it, fondly or not, as the gateway into our computers. But somewhere along the way, DOS gave way to graphical environments, and some of us opted to move to open source alternatives.

But in the free software world, DOS is still alive and well in the form of FreeDOS, an open source operating system maintained by Jim Hall and a team of dedicated developers who are keeping the DOS legacy alive well into the twenty-first century. And more than simply an existing code base, FreeDOS is still being actively developed and is approaching a new release in the near future ("When it's ready," according to Jim). FreeDOS has proved to be an important tool to numerous legacy applications powering critical systems which were never migrated to a more modern operating system.

I caught up with Jim to learn more about the FreeDOS project and where it's headed in this interview.

More. https://opensource.com/life/16/9/interview-jim-hall-freedos

[Oceander]

Interesting.  I remember DOS.

[Sanguine]

Interesting.  I remember DOS.

I loved DOS.

[XenaLee]

I loved DOS.

Ditto that.

[geronl]

DOS is the future

but only with DOS Shell

[r9etb]

DOS: the Disk Operating System. For many of us whose computer coming-of-age story spanned across the 80s and 90s, we remember it, fondly or not, as the gateway into our computers. But somewhere along the way, DOS gave way to graphical environments, and some of us opted to move to open source alternatives.

Some things are still a lot easier to do in DOS.

[roamer_1]

Some things are still a lot easier to do in DOS.

I still use DOS - Many diagnostics and burn-in utils are still DOS based...

I haven't looked at FreeDOS in quite a while. It is around here where it was part of a distribution (bootable CD or the like)... I also have Udo Khunt's last version of OpenDOS - A derivative modified from the last version of Caldera DOS (the final lineage of DR DOS)...

But what I use is a modified MS-DOS 7.10 with an option to boot a highly modified Win98SE mini... Still the best option I have found... And literally unchanged for a couple decades now.

[Oceander]

I still use DOS - Many diagnostics and burn-in utils are still DOS based...

I haven't looked at FreeDOS in quite a while. It is around here where it was part of a distribution (bootable CD or the like)... I also have Udo Khunt's last version of OpenDOS - A derivative modified from the last version of Caldera DOS (the final lineage of DR DOS)...

But what I use is a modified MS-DOS 7.10 with an option to boot a highly modified Win98SE mini... Still the best option I have found... And literally unchanged for a couple decades now.

Wow!  Win98SE.  The first version of Windows I used was WindowsME.  Ughh.

[r9etb]

Wow!  Win98SE.  The first version of Windows I used was WindowsME.  Ughh.

You're a mere youngster.  Windows 1.5, I think....

[roamer_1]

Wow!  Win98SE.  The first version of Windows I used was WindowsME.  Ughh.

Sorry for you - WinME was the worst of the Win9x systems... They tried really hard to make the user stay in Win.
Win98 was less Windows oriented (or at least, you could easily make it that way)... It still admitted to being a DOS boot. ME tried hard to deny it, and it made the system far less useful.

I still like the DOS/Win system better - Simple old DOS is extremely hard to break. Nearly bulletproof, and if it did break, it was a simple matter to reinstall (DOS only). As far as fixing Windows, or getting files off of a broken system, it was really a much better scenario to be able to boot to a simple integrated system and get in under the hood.

Linux is that way too - The windowing system is an afterthought. The power is on the cmdline. Not so much with NT. If the kernel is broken, you're pretty locked out by comparison...

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Dos was ok. Not exactly sure why typing a command in is better than clicking on a link. 

[Oceander]

Dos was ok. Not exactly sure why typing a command in is better than clicking on a link. 

More control over what an application or executable can do.  Many of the GUI components do not give complete access to all of the options that some of the underlying executables have.  To access all of the options for some executables you have to go down to the shell itself.

[Oceander]

You're a mere youngster.  Windows 1.5, I think....

Before that I was on Mac because the university only ran Macs.  My first system, though (other than the Atari) was a DOS-based IBM machine.

[Oceander]

Sorry for you - WinME was the worst of the Win9x systems... They tried really hard to make the user stay in Win.
Win98 was less Windows oriented (or at least, you could easily make it that way)... It still admitted to being a DOS boot. ME tried hard to deny it, and it made the system far less useful.

I still like the DOS/Win system better - Simple old DOS is extremely hard to break. Nearly bulletproof, and if it did break, it was a simple matter to reinstall (DOS only). As far as fixing Windows, or getting files off of a broken system, it was really a much better scenario to be able to boot to a simple integrated system and get in under the hood.

Linux is that way too - The windowing system is an afterthought. The power is on the cmdline. Not so much with NT. If the kernel is broken, you're pretty locked out by comparison...

I've noticed that with linux.  It's actually kind of amusing to be able to play around with different GUIs on top of the same OS.

[Elderberry]

You're a mere youngster.  Windows 1.5, I think....

I stayed on DOS6.22 until I finally moved to Win3.11

[Elderberry]

Before that I was on Mac because the university only ran Macs.  My first system, though (other than the Atari) was a DOS-based IBM machine.

My first computer was the SYM-1.

[Oceander]

My first computer was the SYM-1.

I had to go and look that one up!

[Elderberry]

Before that I was on Mac because the university only ran Macs.  My first system, though (other than the Atari) was a DOS-based IBM machine.

My first programming, at school, was on the 8080 using CP/M 2.2

[Elderberry]

I had to go and look that one up!

I took a Microcomputer Applications course at U of Houston,  where we all bought a SYM-1. My project was an auto-ranging digital voltmeter. I got the eeproms for the assembler and basic for it from one of the students. I fully populated its memory to 4K. Program load/store was via cassette recorder.

I remember when I got it, the first program I had running on it was the Hunt the Wumpus game that was out for the Kim-1, its predecessor, another 6502 machine.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

More control over what an application or executable can do.  Many of the GUI components do not give complete access to all of the options that some of the underlying executables have.  To access all of the options for some executables you have to go down to the shell itself.

If the option is a user option it will nearly always have some GUI checkbox or some such.

Only advantage to CLI is script-ability.

There's no more inherent "control" over an application by running a command. It's not magic.

[Oceander]

If the option is a user option it will nearly always have some GUI checkbox or some such.

Only advantage to CLI is script-ability.

There's no more inherent "control" over an application by running a command. It's not magic.

It's not a question of magic; it is a question of some things simply not being available through the GUI; for some things there simply is no checkbox on the GUI.

[Doug Loss]

Boy, y'all seem to be youngsters!  The first DOS I used was IBM-DOS 2.0; the first Windows I saw (no one sane actually tried to use it) was Windows 286.  As for Linux, the GUI isn't so much an afterthought as an option.  We routinely didn't bother installing it on networking equipment or servers, as all it did was suck up CPU cycles that could be better-used for the devices' primary purposes.  GUIs are fine for end-user-facing systems, as they tend to be easier to use for common-place uses.  But as was said previously, you don't get the complete power of the system unless you have the ability to drop into a terminal session and run the commands from the command line with all their options.  Even if a GUI frontend to the commands gives you access to all the flags, it will almost never give the the scripting ability the CLI will, to send the output of one command directly to the input of another among other things.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

It's not a question of magic; it is a question of some things simply not being available through the GUI; for some things there simply is no checkbox on the GUI.

Utter tosh. On any link you can launch an programs with any options, from a link.

I use Linux sans GUI exclusively. I first used AT&T MS-DOS on my father company AT  in the mid 80's.

That being said, there's nothing wrong with using the GUI.

[Oceander]

Utter tosh. On any link you can launch an programs with any options, from a link.

I use Linux sans GUI exclusively. I first used AT&T MS-DOS on my father company AT  in the mid 80's.

That being said, there's nothing wrong with using the GUI.

I agree that, 99.9% of the time there is nothing wrong with using the GUI; in fact, I would say that in many instances it's not only easier to use the GUI, it's safer to use the GUI because there's less chance of accidentally using the wrong option, for example.  However, the GUI at least sometimes does not give you access to all of the options the executable has.  For example, chkdsk has advanced options that are only available from the command line; they aren't available from the GUI.

There are also some programs that only run on command line.  One of the ones I used to use frequently (and still use occasionally) is exiftool (http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/); I haven't checked in a while, so I don't know if there is a full-blooded GUI now that sits on top of the .exe and gives you all the functionality you get from command line, but I doubt it.

[ShadowAce]

@BikkFire @geronl @Smokin Joe @roamer_1 @Blizzardnh @markomalley @VarmintAl @Doug Loss @Unlimited @guitar4jesus