FreeDOS - An alternative to MS-DOS?

Did you know that FreeDOS is an MS-DOS compatible operating system which tries to achieve full compatibility? Let's see if FreeDOS keeps what it promises! I am going to try FreeDOS, try a few games, install Windows 3.1 and compare performance between FreeDOS and MS-DOS.

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00:00 DOS
01:10 FreeDOS
02:26 Installation
04:31 First boot
05:09 Testing games (X-Wing, Doom)
06:49 Unzipping and archive
07:27 Windows 3.1
09:46 Performance
10:32 My thoughts

[philscomputerlab]

Great video! FreeDOS is a great project, but specifically for retro gaming, the compatibility is not as good. I see FreeDOS more for more modern machines and when you want to play around with some of the new features like virtual CD and mounting ISO files or USB support.

[slycordinator]

You can even find FreeDOS included on some modern computers. I bought a cheap Lenovo laptop a few years ago online, chose the option to not add an OS since I could get Windows cheaper on my own, and when it arrived, it had FreeDOS preinstalled. My guess is that they just used that at the factory to ensure that all the parts were in working order.

[nocturnal]

I've used freedos, to flash motherboard bios, since i can just run it from a USB drive. Works like a charm.

[Thaleios]

Very nostalgic. My first personal computer was a Xerox 820 with dual 8" 360k floppies that ran CP/M. It was given to me in the early 80s by a friend of the family who was a software engineer. I loved that machine.

[tony]

Every time I work with old computer hardware I suddenly remember that it was not "easy" back in the days. XMS, EMS, Base memory, DOS=HIGH, UMB, resource conflicts, the card works in a slot but not in another! :) Fun times (not).
I only heard about FreeDOS when making a bootable stick, Rufus has that option. But I never considered installing FreeDOS on a vintage machine to be honest.

Nice video and... nice board! (PS I checked the BIOS string and indeed mine is identical! I made a community post on my channel and linked your video as well).

[Doso]

FreeDos sometimes comes with Laptops that aren't pre-bundled with Windows. I haven even seen it on bootable media like USB sticks or CD images that some vendors provide so you can update firmware of network cards or BIOSes.

[tubaterry]

This video is reminding me of the stack of boot disks we had next to the family computer. Because so many games had incompatible configuration requirements, we just made boot disks - one for XMS, one for EMS, one for SoundBlaster compatibility... good times

[bad.sector]

Thanks for this video! It was a good overview, but I was really missing the things that differentiate this from MS-DOS, and which actually might have changed your conclusion. There's USB, LFN support, FAT32 support and so on... whoch actually makes this DOS better to work with when it comes to modern things like larger drives, exchanging data with your DOS system and non-crippled filenames (e.g. Norton Commander 5.5 supports them as well).
Maybe that's something for your follow-up video when you try it on a newer system...

[tato-chip]

there are some nice modern features of freedos like tab completion and the freedos package manager.

[rwl]

Enjoyable and informative video. Thanks!

[Melechtna]

Your accent, when you say FreeDOS, on more than one occasion, sounds like you're saying "Fritos", and that gave me more than a few chuckles.

[MendenLama]

Back in the day, I always left Windows 3.0, 3.1, 3.11 and the like when I wanted to run Dos programs. I remember I had a start menu for either running Win 3.x or just plain Dos with start parameters for specific apps. Running Dos apps from inside Windows did show sometimes weird side effects or they did not start at all because of memory restrictions or graphics issues and so on.

[benjaminwirth]

I think i used Free Dos to update the Bios from my abit be6. Nice video as always 👍👍

[Miksa]

I was a 4DOS user in the 90s, I think it had quite a few usability and appearance improvements like filename completion. You should try that next.

[boarMcberry]

perhaps need to test this on certain DOS games that requires specific configs like wing commander or ultima & see how they fares.

[itabiritomg]

i used DOS and DOXBOX a lot during my graduation! Great OS to try some programming experiments.

[JoePlett]

I was always a Digital Research DR-DOS user (until MS went out of its way to sabotage it).
My experience with FreeDOS has been ....spotty.... some Motherboard BIOSes have choked on it while DR & MS DOSes ran fine.
Since everyone else has abandoned the DOS environment, I applaud and encourage their continued efforts to keep the platform alive and relevant - however niche.

[nullplan]

I have used FreeDOS in the past to do BIOS updates. And I had the exact same "find the right config" thing going on then. It is a little galling when the BIOS updater tells you that you don't have enough memory on a system with multiple GB of RAM.

[trueriver]

FreeDos was also used for a long time to install upgrades to BIOS -- that is too reflash the ROM. They needed to do that because after MS DOS 6.22 the versions of DOS you could income from Windows became incompatible with the low level access needed to reflash the mobo.

So the mobo manufacturers could either pay MS to licence 6.22, or use FreeDos.

Equally Linux has never had those low level hooks, like Win 95 it uses 32 bit drivers that don't bother with the low level BIOS calls at all. So without FreeDos we'd have had to use an MS product...

[Ojref]

IBM PC DOS is my go-to. Works perfectly fine.