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Welcome to FreeDOS

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FreeDOS is an open source 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.
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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!
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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!
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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.

FreeDOS is open source software! 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.

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Latest Updates

DOS Windowing Library

Richard Hulse has released a DOS windowing library as open source software. From the library's GitHub page: "This library was written around 1990, and was inspired by Radio New Zelaland technician Phil Gibbs' C library, which did essentially the same thing. The library creates a screen buffer and text windows can be created, layered and moved around. When a window is moved, the library rewrites the windows to the screen buffer from top to bottom, and then flushes the buffer directlt to screen memory." The library is written in assembly, and released as open source under the MIT license. Thanks Richard!

Richard also released his GO utility to find files or directories. "GO uses my DOS windowing library to present the file and diretories that are found, and the up and down arrow keys are used to move through the list. Pressing enter takes you to the selection." GO is released under the MIT license. Find it at GO's GitHub page.

Updated cedit programmer's editor

cedit is a simple console editor for DOS and other systems. This editor is intended for BASIC programing, and includes highlighting for the FreeBASIC programming language. Developer 'stabud' has released a new version. Bug fixes in this version include: + Fixed path setting + Fixed unnecessasry scrolling when commenting or deleting + Fixed cursor position after redu + Application optimization + Ability to run scripts (BAT) from the editor. Download the new version from cedit on SourceForge.

Blocek editor 1.73

Blocek is a text editor for DOS with unicode support. It allows you to edit multilanguage documents, translate texts from one language to another, write modern web pages and so on. Ladislav has released version 1.73 that includes these changes: Mouse driver improvements / Functions for related characterse / Speed optimizations / System info window / Show line eding type / Various bugfixes. See the Blocek website for the new release, with full details. We've also mirrored this release on the FreeDOS Files Archive at Ibiblio, under /files/edit/blocek

Libm math library

Libm is a public domain math library for C compilers. Gregory writes: "Three years in the making, libm-0.2 has a few new functions in it, such as implementations of the Bessel functions, a new implementation of ctan and ctanh, and a couple of other things." We've mirrored this in the FreeDOS Files Archive at Ibiblio, under /devel/libs/libm. Gregory is looking for testers; please try it out!

(4/23) New version: Gregory released libm 0.3 as a minor update.

(5/7) New version: Gregory released libm 0.4 as a minor update. "I added the complex arctangent and complex hyperbolic arctangent functions to libm." You can find it on Ibiblio in /devel/libs/libm

Message logging system - Logger (alpha release)

Have you every watched your FreeDOS machine boot and suddenly wonder “what was that message?” as it quickly scrolled off the screen? Logger is a message logging system for boot and general message logging. Jerome has released the Alpha-3 version of Logger for others to try out. "It includes a device driver that gets loaded in the FDCONFIG.SYS (or CONFIG.SYS) that will record all the messages at boot time. And continue logging during normal system usage until it is turned off. It also includes a program to VIEW the log (in full color when enabled), PRINT it to file for later and various other functions. When logging is on during normal system usage, it can even be used to view the output of previous commands similar to a “scroll-back” buffer of up to 64Mb of XMS memory." You can find it at Logger website.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel

You might not know the FreeDOS Project has a YouTube channel. Jim posts videos there about once a week, to highlight FreeDOS programs, classic DOS programs, and DOS programming. Lately, most of the videos are DOS programming. Check out these latest videos: Epic Pinball on VirtualBox | optimize C programs with macros | programming bugs with macros | DOS timestamps | using FreeDOS VMATH | write your own math program | machine language with the CPU Toy | install FreeDOS on QEMU | how I write programs | getpixel and setpixel | pi by counting pixels (or not) | pi by counting pixels (area method). Don't forget to subscribe to the channel, this helps with our visibility on YouTube.

In other YouTube news, the Bits und Bolts channel recently reviewed FreeDOS as an alternative to MS-DOS. Thanks!

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