FreeDOS is a complete, free, DOS-compatible operating system that you can use to play classic DOS games, run legacy business software, or develop embedded systems. Any program that works on MS-DOS should also run on FreeDOS.
It doesn’t cost anything to download and use FreeDOS. You can also share FreeDOS for others to enjoy! And you can view and edit our source code, because all FreeDOS programs are distributed under the GNU General Public License or a similar open source software license.
You can play your favorite DOS games on FreeDOS. And there are a lot of great classic games to play: Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Commander Keen, Rise of the Triad, Jill of the Jungle, Duke Nukem, and many others!
Need to recover data from an old business program? Or maybe you need to run a report from your old finance system? Just install your legacy software under FreeDOS, and you’ll be good to go!
Many embedded systems run on DOS, although modern systems may instead run on Linux. If you support an older embedded system, you might be running DOS. And FreeDOS can fit in very well.
Simtel was once a vast archive of freeware and shareware programs for different operating systems, including DOS. Unfortunately, Simtel shut down in 2013, and DOS users everywhere lost access to this great resource. Now, FreeDOS fan Michael Babcock has recreated the Simtel DOS shareware site by posting copies of Simtel archive CDs on a website. You can access it at simtel.site.
I've written several blog articles about running classic DOS programs on FreeDOS. Spreadsheets were arguably the "killer app" that helped make DOS the juggernaut in personal and office computing. So you may want to check out the original spreadsheet, VisiCalc, now available for free from Dan Bricklin's VisiCalc website. I've written a "spotlight" article about VisiCalc. Also check out my "spotlight" article on Quattro Pro, a spreadsheet that still feels modern. And don't forget the "spotlight" article about As-Easy-As, a very powerful shareware spreadsheet for DOS, and still my favorite.
If you're new to FreeDOS, our new tutorial might interest you. New users often ask "I installed FreeDOS, but how do I use it?" If you haven't used DOS before, the bare DOS prompt can seem a little unfriendly. And maybe scary. So I wanted to write a gentle introduction to FreeDOS, to get you started. This tutorial on basic navigation introduces how to get around, and how to look at files.
Many people use FreeDOS to run classic DOS programs, so I have been writing occasional articles about legacy DOS programs on the FreeDOS blog. I recently posted a brief "spotlight" article about WordStar 4.0. Maybe you've heard of WordStar but haven't used it. And that wouldn't be a surprise; WordStar is a very old program, and was one of the first word processors for DOS. You may also want to read a similar "spotlight" article about WordPerfect 5.1. This was my preferred word processor through most of the 1980s. WordPerfect was a great word processing system: fast, powerful, and streamlined. I liked that WordPerfect "got out of the way" so it only displayed my text, plus a small status bar at the bottom of the screen.
Ercan has updated his DOS Coreutils. Ercan's project aims to recreate several Linux commands in DOS. So far, DOS Coreutils includes commands like beep, cat, clear, cp, date, ls, mkdir/rmdir, pwd, time, and others. Source code is in C and compiles using OpenWatcom, distributed under the GNU General Public License v3.0. DOS Coreutils 0.6 is out now, at Ercan's DOS Coreutils Github.