3 ms·

The fun part about freedos is that it feels like a very modern dos environment. A lot of what you would call quality of life features compared to the last MS do

by somat 2y ago

The fun part about freedos is that it feels like a very modern dos environment. A lot of what you would call quality of life features compared to the last MS dos. I have always wondered why you could not have a 64-bit native dos, The answer I have come up with is that it would not be dos because it would not be compatible with dos programs. the second perhaps more important reason is that, sure dos is an operating system. but it leans really hard on the pc firmware, the bios. if you squint right, the bios could be considered the actual OS and dos just a shell on it. And the bios has a lot of legacy cruft and limitations, modern pc operating systems ditch the bios as fast as possible and lean on direct access. But in that light the modern 64-bit native dos might be the uefi shell. Conclusion. As a big unix snob, I don't really like dos all that much and it have little nostalgia for it. I suspect HP could(and do it appears) get away with a minimal console only linux install for their firmware flashing needs. but the long tail of low level dos tooling for the PC world is still hanging on.

zozbot234 2y ago
The UEFI shell is pretty much a glorified MS-DOG anyway.
- fuzzfactor 2y ago
  arf
- pwdisswordfishz 2y ago
  Woof woof
- spauldo 2y ago
  I know that was likely a typo, but can you imagine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob baked into your firmware?
LeoPanthera 2y ago
While DOS does rely on the BIOS for low-level operations (especially in real mode), it is still an independent operating system. The BIOS provides essential services such as disk access, keyboard input, and screen output, but DOS has its own file system, command interpreter, and APIs. The big missing feature preventing the UEFI shell from being a modern DOS is the lack of multitasking. DOS didn't support this very well, but it did have the concept of TSRs. The UEFI shell has no equivalent.
ndiddy 2y ago
>I suspect HP could(and do it appears) get away with a minimal console only linux install for their firmware flashing needs. but the long tail of low level dos tooling for the PC world is still hanging on. Historically, the FreeDOS option existed because Microsoft banned OEMs who sold computers with Windows from also selling computers without an operating system because they thought it would encourage software piracy. OEMs didn't want to have to provide end-user support for Linux or other alternative OS's, so they instead decided on FreeDOS since it qualified as an OS, but was basic enough that nobody would actually use it. Before anyone mentions old industrial/scientific equipment, that stuff all depends on hardware ISA cards or physical parallel/serial ports so it's irrelevant on a prebuilt computer made in the past 20 years. I'm not sure why FreeDOS is offered here since there's also an Ubuntu option for people who don't want to pay for a Windows license. In this case, because the FreeDOS installation is inside a VM, it won't let you do BIOS updates or whatever since the VM doesn't have access to the computer's physical hardware. I imagine what happened was that HP had a hard drive image they'd been loading on PCs since the early 2010s set up to dual-boot FreeDOS and a Debian kiosk installation with the digital manual. Someone at HP was tasked with making the image work on newer computers that didn't have firmware support for booting in BIOS mode, so they came up with the solution of booting up a copy of Debian that then auto-starts a FreeDOS VM.
- dlenski 2y ago
  > I imagine what happened was that HP had a hard drive image they'd been loading on PCs since the early 2010s set up to dual-boot FreeDOS and a Debian kiosk installation with the digital manual. Someone at HP was tasked with making the image work on newer computers that didn't have firmware support for booting in BIOS mode, so they came up with the solution of booting up a copy of Debian that then auto-starts a FreeDOS VM. Seems likely, yeah. I wonder why HP still bothers to offer the FreeDOS option, rather than just ship with no OS installed; Microsoft doesn't actually care about OEMs shipping with no OS installed anymore, do they?
  - hulitu 2y ago
    > Microsoft doesn't actually care about OEMs shipping with no OS installed anymore, do they? Embrace, extend, extinguish. /s They do care. Else you would see other OSs on new hardware.
nancyminusone 2y ago
Isn't a 64-bit DOS kind of what TempleOS was supposed to be? You know, besides the ... other stuff.
- speed_spread 2y ago
  From the unrestrained flat address space perspective, yeah. But TempleOS doesn't rely on the BIOS like DOS, and it's shell and GUI and dev environment are fully integrated, more like a Smalltalk VM. DOS is just a bad shell.
immibis 2y ago
> if you squint right, the bios could be considered the actual OS and dos just a shell on it IIRC this is by design. The operating system consists of two components: the Basic Input/Output System is specific to a computer model and provides routines with a standard interface to access the computer's peripherals, and the Basic Disk Operating System provides higher-level routines and human interfaces based on that. This was in CP/M. Then it was possible to produce alternatives to BDOS using the same BIOS interfaces.

by somat 2y ago

zozbot234 2y ago

The UEFI shell is pretty much a glorified MS-DOG anyway.

fuzzfactor 2y ago
arf
pwdisswordfishz 2y ago
Woof woof
spauldo 2y ago
I know that was likely a typo, but can you imagine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob baked into your firmware?

LeoPanthera 2y ago

While DOS does rely on the BIOS for low-level operations (especially in real mode), it is still an independent operating system. The BIOS provides essential services such as disk access, keyboard input, and screen output, but DOS has its own file system, command interpreter, and APIs. The big missing feature preventing the UEFI shell from being a modern DOS is the lack of multitasking. DOS didn't support this very well, but it did have the concept of TSRs. The UEFI shell has no equivalent.

ndiddy 2y ago

>I suspect HP could(and do it appears) get away with a minimal console only linux install for their firmware flashing needs. but the long tail of low level dos tooling for the PC world is still hanging on. Historically, the FreeDOS option existed because Microsoft banned OEMs who sold computers with Windows from also selling computers without an operating system because they thought it would encourage software piracy. OEMs didn't want to have to provide end-user support for Linux or other alternative OS's, so they instead decided on FreeDOS since it qualified as an OS, but was basic enough that nobody would actually use it. Before anyone mentions old industrial/scientific equipment, that stuff all depends on hardware ISA cards or physical parallel/serial ports so it's irrelevant on a prebuilt computer made in the past 20 years. I'm not sure why FreeDOS is offered here since there's also an Ubuntu option for people who don't want to pay for a Windows license. In this case, because the FreeDOS installation is inside a VM, it won't let you do BIOS updates or whatever since the VM doesn't have access to the computer's physical hardware. I imagine what happened was that HP had a hard drive image they'd been loading on PCs since the early 2010s set up to dual-boot FreeDOS and a Debian kiosk installation with the digital manual. Someone at HP was tasked with making the image work on newer computers that didn't have firmware support for booting in BIOS mode, so they came up with the solution of booting up a copy of Debian that then auto-starts a FreeDOS VM.

dlenski 2y ago
> I imagine what happened was that HP had a hard drive image they'd been loading on PCs since the early 2010s set up to dual-boot FreeDOS and a Debian kiosk installation with the digital manual. Someone at HP was tasked with making the image work on newer computers that didn't have firmware support for booting in BIOS mode, so they came up with the solution of booting up a copy of Debian that then auto-starts a FreeDOS VM. Seems likely, yeah. I wonder why HP still bothers to offer the FreeDOS option, rather than just ship with no OS installed; Microsoft doesn't actually care about OEMs shipping with no OS installed anymore, do they?
- hulitu 2y ago
  > Microsoft doesn't actually care about OEMs shipping with no OS installed anymore, do they? Embrace, extend, extinguish. /s They do care. Else you would see other OSs on new hardware.

nancyminusone 2y ago

Isn't a 64-bit DOS kind of what TempleOS was supposed to be? You know, besides the ... other stuff.

speed_spread 2y ago
From the unrestrained flat address space perspective, yeah. But TempleOS doesn't rely on the BIOS like DOS, and it's shell and GUI and dev environment are fully integrated, more like a Smalltalk VM. DOS is just a bad shell.

immibis 2y ago

> if you squint right, the bios could be considered the actual OS and dos just a shell on it IIRC this is by design. The operating system consists of two components: the Basic Input/Output System is specific to a computer model and provides routines with a standard interface to access the computer's peripherals, and the Basic Disk Operating System provides higher-level routines and human interfaces based on that. This was in CP/M. Then it was possible to produce alternatives to BDOS using the same BIOS interfaces.