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.
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.
Mark Oleson writes: "For those that are interested, I ported LibreSSL to FreeDOS using OpenWatcom. It can be found on my GitHub" This repository contains a port of libressl, wattcp32, and wget to FreeDOS using the OpenWatcom compiler.
Ben Collver "recently built Tcl for DOS using DJGPP. This is based on the work of Georg Potthast and Viktor Wagner. These builds include Ck and Sqlite. Below are download links for Tcl 8.5.19 and Tcl 8.6.9." Ben also shared Tcl 8.4.20 built using DJGPP with Ck and Sqlite. We've also mirrored them at ibiblio. Thanks Ben!
Longtime FreeDOS developer Bruce Axtens has "started dumping my DOS projects onto Github. If there's anything there you think may be helpful in FreeDOS, either clone or build - or ask me to. I may have time." Bruce's projects include Cross (a simple cross-referencer written in Fitted Software Tools Modula-2), MenuManager (a menuing system for DOS written in Turbo Pascal 5.5), Tickle (a scripting language written in Turbo Pascal 5.5) and Trickle (rewritten in Fitted Software Tools Modula-2), Search (find string in file or files written in Fitted Software Tools Modula-2), Squirt (file copier written in Fitted Software Tools Modula-2), and others. MIT license. Find them on Bruce's GitHub
The FreeDOS Project turned 25 years old this year! And to celebrate, we've made a special anniversary t-shirt. Available in mens and womens styles, but you can also transfer the design to other products on Zazzle, like stickers or coffee mugs or hats. If you prefer a different color t-shirt, you can change that too. You can find them in our FreeDOS @ Zazzle store. Direct links are: mens t-shirt + womens t-shirt.
The FIND command is a classic DOS utility that finds a string in a text file or files. Version 3.0 had a bug where FIND would access the A: drive for no reason. Thanks to Tom Ehlert, this bug has been fixed. "whatever the reason for the bug is/was: the makefile requires some file lfnchk.asm that is neither there nor required. when the makefile is changed to ignore this missing file, the resulting FIND runs without (immediate) problems." I've put the updated FIND 3.0b on the files archive at ibiblio. Thanks Tom!