ChapterZero

As I sometimes do, I was torturing myself by looking at the various OEM linux boxes available (this time because I discovered delicious, candy-like Beryl and realized my system’s not computer enough to run it). The first link that came up was to Dell– you might recall the big bruhaha back when the decision was being made of which distro to support– which is selling Ubuntu boxes. But did you know it’s also selling FreeDOS boxes? Someone at Dell must be awfully nostalgic about the old days of TSRs and autoexec.bat.

Now, the last time I had heard of FreeDOS was back when Windows 95 was a big deal, so I figured maybe it’d become something more than just a DOS clone. But visiting the FreeDOS website disabused me of this notion:

FreeDOS aims to be a complete, free, 100% MS-DOS compatible operating system (mostly achieved except Windows compatibility - Windows standard-mode works on FreeDOS, but 386-mode / WfW 3.11 does not.) See FreeDOS Bugs for details. A short list of things possible with FreeDOS today:

    * Easy multiboot with Win95-2003 and NT/XP/ME
    * FAT32 file system and large disk support (LBA)
    * LFN support (with several tools, and FreeCOM (COMMAND.COM).)
    * LBACACHE - disk cache (harddisks in CHS and LBA mode, diskette)
    * Memory Managers: HIMEM, EMM386, UMBPCI
    * SHSUCDX (MSCDEX replacement) and CD-ROM driver (XCDROM)
    * CUTEMOUSE - Mouse driver with scroll wheel support
    * FDAPM - APM info/control/suspend/poweroff, ACPI throttle, HLT energy saving...
    * XDMA - UDMA driver for DOS: up to 4 harddisks
    * MPXPLAY - media player for mp3, ogg, wmv... with built-in AC97 and SB16 drivers
    * 7ZIP, INFO-ZIP zip & unzip... - modern archivers are available for DOS
    * EDIT / SETEDIT - multi window text editors
    * HTMLHELP - help viewer, can read help directly from a zip file
    * PG - powerful text viewer (similar to V. D. Buerg's LIST)
    * many text mode programs ported from Linux thanks to DJGPP
    * GRAPHICS - greyscale hardcopy on ESC/P, HP PCL and PostScript printers
    * etc.

So … you can run text editors, play some graphics, and print some grayscale documents. Not exactly a hard-hitting OS is it? I’m stumped as to why Dell is selling such powerful systems with DOS as the operating system. Where’s the demand?

Possibly relevant posts:

• I have been blessed… (1/22/2007)
• Persevering for the Pastries (3/3/2002)
• Mail drop! (3/8/2002)