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.
The FLOSS Weekly Show interviewed Jim Hall about our recent FreeDOS 1.2 release. It was a lot of fun to talk about the history of FreeDOS, and how people use FreeDOS today. You can watch the video or listen to the audio stream via the TWIT.TV network, as FLOSS Weekly #416. Thanks to Randal Schwartz and Simon Phipps for the great interview!
Since we released FreeDOS 1.2 a week ago, lots of people have downloaded the new version. In just the last week, FreeDOS 1.2 was downloaded almost 45,000 times! This plus the downloads of the FreeDOS 1.2 test release set a new download record for FreeDOS. We track monthly download stats for FreeDOS, and our peak recorded month was 69,600 downloads in 2014. We've averaged around 30,000 downloads per month over the last two years. In December 2016, we had over 85,000 downloads! Thanks to all our fans - you are amazing!
We released the FreeDOS 1.2 distribution on December 25, and this week many tech news sites have covered the new FreeDOS. We are tracking a complete timeline of interesting events in the FreeDOS Project, including links to articles, on our FreeDOS History page. Slashdot was the first to write about FreeDOS 1.2, but we've also seen coverage from Engadget Germany, LWN, Heise Online, PC Forum Hungary, FOSS Bytes, ZDNet Germany, PC Welt, Tom's Hardware, and Open Source Feed. And that's just a sample of the news! We've seen articles from the US, Germany, Japan, Hungary, Ukraine, Italy, and others. As always, if you see FreeDOS in the news, please tell us so we can add it to our list!
We are proud to announce the release of FreeDOS 1.2! You can download it now from our Downloads page. This latest official FreeDOS distribution is the result of the hard work from many people. Thanks to everyone in the FreeDOS Project for their work towards this new release! There are too many of you to recognize individually, but you have all helped enormously. Thank you! I'm very excited for the new FreeDOS 1.2!
FreeDOS 1.2 features an all-new installer that makes it easy to install FreeDOS. After you install FreeDOS, try the FDIMPLES program to install new programs or to remove any you don't want. FDIMPLES makes it easy to customize your FreeDOS the way you want it.
Are you writing an article about FreeDOS 1.2? Jim has written a press kit about the history of FreeDOS and the development of FreeDOS 1.2. With this press kit, I wanted to provide some additional information and resources about the FreeDOS 1.2 release. If you are writing an article about FreeDOS, feel free to use this information to help you. The press kit also includes a bunch of screenshots and other images that you can use. You can download everything here: press-kit.zip