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The weird Hewlett Packard FreeDOS option
- walrus01 4y agoIt's like a Linux, qemu, DOS turducken
- ObscureScience 4y agoWow. But it's also quite surprising considering HP (and HPE which I understand is not very related) usually provides FreeDOS based firmware update and configurarion ISOs on their product download pages.
- indigodaddy 4y agoVery interesting. I’m assuming there is no persistence in the referenced live squashfs ?
- mrugiero 4y agosquashfs is supposed to be read-only, right?
- ndiddy 4y agoI’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?
- mcculley 4y agoMaybe it is for customers running weird old legacy hardware (e.g., lab devices, manufacturing, that only runs on DOS).
- ndiddy 4y agoWeird 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mcculley 4y agoI 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?
- zozbot234 4y agoUSB-serial conversion would add a measurable amount of latency, and the access to USB hardware would occur under a non-real-time OS. Whether the setup "works" would be highly hardware-specific. There are modern industrial "PC" boards that are essentially a i586 implementation in a SoC and can run these workloads far more reliably, while consuming a lot less power compared to old x86 hardware. (They're also of interest to retrocomputing enthusiasts, for largely the same reasons.)
- petre 4y agoThat's orecisely how we run our thread 3D printer. It even has a serial (UART) to USB chip on board and it's connected to a RPi3 boc running Linux and Octoprint.
- coryrc 4y agoIt probably won't if they do weird things with the flow control pins or if the timing really matters, but serial is far more likely than parallel to keep working.
- GekkePrutser 4y agoYeah this is why industrial PCs still have those physical ports.
- joshcryer 4y agoI suspect it's more bland than that, they need to be able to have a booting/working system otherwise the customer is going to call up support and say their computer isn't booting or that it's saying "no OS found" type messages. It's just to cover themselves, that's why they include enough Linux to be able to load a PDF reader. It should be easy enough to do d:\setup.exe with a USB that has a Windows installer on it, with this setup.
- walrus01 4y agoYeah, but why not have something that just uefi boots into a barebones grub2 and then cli only debian-stable and bash shell? Forget the DOS part.
- admax88qqq 4y agoIt's probably more like they have DOS support contracted out to some vendor. And when the systems upgraded to the point of not being able to run DOS natively the vendor built this franken-OS to fulfill the contract. Renegotiating the contract to something sensible like "don't run DOS anymore" was probably hopeless in the face of the bureaucracy, or risked losing to contact.
- JonathonW 4y agoWindows installers are bootable these days (from DVD or USB; doesn’t matter); they haven’t been runnable from DOS for a couple decades now. At any rate, even if you did find some OS you could install from DOS, you’d be installing it into the QEMU image if you installed from FreeDOS on a system with this arrangement. There’s no way to get back to the bare metal hardware from FreeDOS here.
- dmitrygr 4y ago> modern x86 processors can’t boot into BIOS mode anymore This is false. They still can and happily will. Issue is more about vendor not shipping a CSM image. A modern x86 processor will happily run real DOS just fine.
- yuhong 4y agoIntel officially pulled support in 2020-2021.
- dmitrygr 4y agoIt still works fine, just not officially encouraged by Intel
- toast0 4y agoIntel's been threatening to cut off everything non UEFI for a while... I think I read the iGPU in Alder Lake doesn't work unless you're running UEFI? It might not have happened yet, but it seems inevitable.
- userbinator 4y agoThat's probably because it doesn't have a traditional VBIOS. ...which makes me wonder whether it's possible for the community to write one, given how much docs and source code Intel have released for their GPUs. Of course, how VGA-compatible it is is another thing to consider.
- ndiddy 4y agoThank you for the correction! I saw multiple news articles several years ago saying that Intel would be dropping support for BIOS mode by the end of 2020, but it appears they've been dragging their feet. In the meantime, they seem to have been making moves in other ways, such as not supporting BIOS mode when booting with integrated graphics on 11th gen processors ( https://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1045467 https://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1045467 ).
- windowsrookie 4y ago
- zitterbewegung 4y agoHypothetically if you wanted to use something like FreeBSD, Dragonfly BSD or maybe OpenSolaris? This is a big reach.
- Spooky23 4y agoThe big market for this is K-12 schools. 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.
- solarkraft 4y agoOk, but why the hell FreeDOS?
- mrugiero 4y agoWhy FreeDOS vs nothing or why FreeDOS vs Linux? The former, because some OEMs have agreements with Microsoft that prohibit shipping systems without an OS. They found the loophole that they could ship a free OS as a placeholder. Why not Linux? I guess it was easier at the time and they then just kept shipping what was already working. It was never intended to keep the original OS anyway (and in particular, Linux users tend to be opinionated and install their favorite distro anyway).
- raverbashing 4y agoAnd I guess FreeDOS doesn't support booting by UEFI as well (I mean, can it even?)
- userbinator 4y agoThat was far more amusing and interesting than I thought it would be... I wonder if it can actually boot DOS on the physical hardware, and if it can't ( DOS itself is very minimal in what it requires of the hardware), is it really PC-compatible anymore?
- yuhong 4y agoIntel phased out the UEFI CSM from new platforms in 2020-2021.
- userbinator 4y agoI suppose you could use GRUB and whatever Coreboot has as its BIOS? Either way, sad times indeed when PCs aren't anymore.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoseabios is the project you're looking for, and yes now I want to go see if it supports being booted from GRUB:) EDIT: The answer is yes and it's been done: https://g00se.org/2016/11/seabios-on-libreboot.html https://g00se.org/2016/11/seabios-on-libreboot.html (granted, that's booting directly from coreboot to GRUB, but it should be the same booting UEFI to GRUB AFAIK)
- mwcampbell 4y agoAlternatively, we can be happy that some legacy systems actually die when they're no longer useful. My general attitude toward retro-computing is that the good old days weren't actually that good. I, for one, don't care if the original meaning of "PC" passes into irrelevance.
- userbinator 4y agoHell no. We're being pushed into draconian closed systems, this is starting to infect the PC, and it's only because there's little opposition.
- mc4ndr3 4y agoGhastly.
- Maursault 4y agoKind 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.
- userbinator 4y agoI know you're half-joking but there's actually been a few "bootable PDF" articles on HN before.
- a9h74j 4y agoIt this happened, would we need to say "gnu/ghostscript/linux", to be proper about it?
- jchw 4y agoAnd 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bayindirh 4y agoAlso, don't forget the Minix running inside a small embedded processor inside your processor or platform controller.
- teruakohatu 4y agoI am sure they will soon find a way to add a hypervisor to Minix so they can add yet another layer to the mix.
- bayindirh 4y agoThat'd be fun. Intel would be providing services to customers for running their own spy platform on any supported Intel processor. Not unlike "Other OS" on PS3. Same theory, different application.
- speed_spread 4y agoIt's Minixes all the way down, man.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- timClicks 4y agoI occasionally wonder what an operating system running below ring 0 would be used for. I haven't thought of anything compelling, apart from being a backdoor.
- aidenn0 4y agoI 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.
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoSome 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.
- detaro 4y agowhich leaves the question of why going through the hassle of creating this mess instead of just Linux.
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoBecause they they have to support that linux distro, with all the drivers, update etc.,... And the FreeDOS just works. Doesn't do much, but what it does, it does well.
- detaro 4y agobut the Linux they are shipping underneath that FreeDOS also works. And they also offer Linux preinstalled, so they need to "support" that to whatever amount anyways.
- bryanlarsen 4y agoThey probably only support the FreeDOS, not the underlying distribution. If you mess with the Linux and break the FreeDOS, that's on you. They might have 2 customers running some 40 year old legacy DOS app but 99% of people selecting the FreeDOS option are wiping it to install something else, so using it unsupported.
- NelsonMinar 4y agoImagine being the engineer tasked with creating this bizarro system.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoWhat 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 to ship a Linux distro - heck even if you're going to include some weird DOS VM - why would you ever ship multiple different versions? So yeah, I'm thinking horribly broken company process and/or outsourcing without actually making sure the requirements make sense.
- zozbot234 4y ago> If you don't want to fight MS about selling PCs with no OS, ship some Linux distro. And that's exactly what they're doing. They just did the bare minimum work to be able to fit that Linux setup under their pre-existing "FreeDOS" SKU. And the real point of that SKU is for sophisticated users to wipe the whole thing clean and set up their own OS install. It still works perfectly for that.
- mtrower 4y agoHow does this "FreeDOS" option work better for that than selecting the straight Ubuntu option they offer, and wiping that clean?
- walterbell 4y agoIt avoids HP paying Canonical and/or taking support calls on hundreds of Ubuntu feature packages.
- userbinator 4y agoThe Ubuntu option appears to be free too.
- 4y ago
- john_moscow 4y agoKnowing how big corporations usually work, dropping the FreeDOS option completely due to incompatibility would require approvals from 7 layers of corporate management, while shipping a half-assed version that is not usable for any practical purposes only took one nerd from engineering.
- watersb 4y agoI'm surprised no one has guessed power and thermal management as a reason for running DOS on top of QEMU/Linux. I have no idea. If the laptop is running FreeDOS on "bare metal", what happens when you close the lid and put it in your backpack?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dotancohen 4y ago> If the laptop is running FreeDOS on "bare metal", what > happens when you close the lid and put it in your backpack? That use case isn't even supported in Windows on some Dell models. Discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28639952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28639952
- xen2xen1 4y ago489K? That's terrible memory management! I wouldn't start a dos PC with less than 600k.
- nijave 4y ago>HP computers sold with FreeDOS are intended for customers who have a license for an additional operating system, if so desired From some HP documentation archived on some website called icecat
- hedora 4y agoSo, has anyone bought one of these, then returned it for not being fit for purpose? If not, can they just do the same thing with windows, and not bother with supporting it on bare metal?
- eek2121 4y agoYou are. (Weird that is). I find OEMs that bundle operating systems to be weird. Dictating choice is something a dictatorship would do. I used to argue the reasoning until the obscurities hit.
- nine_k 4y agoNot weird but money-loving; sweet exclusive deals with Microsoft to have Windows preinstalled for less, as long as all machines have it preinstalled. (It was less sweet and more forcing their hand in 1990s.)
- colejohnson66 4y agoYou may be able to buy a laptop with no OS and know what to do, but do the majority of people? It’s not evil; it’s just what’s required if you want to sell computers.
- taubek 4y agoFirst two things that come to my mind are limitations of OS when it comes to memory address space and need to easily display documentation.
- ge0rg 4y agoGiven that HP is also using obscure/outdated Linux images in their own Intelligent Provisioning / Smart Storage Administrator tools that are installed on the built-in flash of (at least) gen8 servers <https://op-co.de/blog/posts/microserver_gen8_fix_boot_order/ https://op-co.de/blog/posts/microserver_gen8_fix_boot_order/>, I'm not at all surprised to see similar approaches in other situations.
- Rarok 4y agoI don't know if the law changed in the last years but here (Spain) it's illegal to sell a computer without a operative system. Today the most easy option probably is to install Linux but I remember this law was there at year 2000 and at that time Linux was harder to install than FreeDOS.