On April 30, Jack Ellis once again updated his UIDE etc. drivers. Changes: "UHDD/UDVD2 can now be run without XMS (at lower speed) for FreeDOS 'scripts' or for tests. UDVD2 can now do 'raw' (trackwriter) input. Other drivers unchanged (re-dated only)." For now, you can only grab binaries and sources at iBiblio (/dos/cdrom/uide/). Thanks again, Jack!

On April 26, Michael Brutman released his latest updates to the mTCP suite of 16-bit networking tools (GPLv3). Changes include: * All: improved TCP/IP lost packet and retransmit support, * All: DHCP lease expiration detection and warning, * IRCjr: mIRC color codes, improved logging support, 132 column, awareness, bug fixes, * FTP client: user input can be longer now (2 lines), 125 responses handled better, * FTP server: improved compatibility with more clients. * Telnet: improved emulation (scroll regions and origin mode support). Grab binaries and sources at http://code.google.com/p/mtcp/ - or on iBiblio under http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/net/mtcp/ - Thanks, Mike!

On April 20, Japheth released JWasm 2.10, his heavily-improved, MASM-compatible fork of OpenWatcom's WASM (Sybase v1 license, OSI approved). Grab binaries and sources at http://www.japheth.de/JWasm.html - or mirrored on iBiblio under http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/asm/jwasm/ - and read the changelog at http://www.japheth.de/JWasm/History.txt . Thanks, Japheth!

Georg Potthast has announced XFDOS, a graphical distribution based on FreeDOS. Please note that THIS IS NOT THE OFFICIAL FREEDOS DISTRIBUTION, but a user-created "spin" of FreeDOS using a graphical desktop. XFDOS consists of a graphical desktop called SLWM combined with the FLTK based applications I ported to DOS plus other DOS applications. This provides a desktop similar to Windows for FreeDOS. Includes the new Dillo for DOS browser. You can add just about any application to this desktop by editing a small configuration file for it. You can move and arrange the icons as you like on the desktop. XFDOS comes in two versions. One is an ISO file to be burned on a CD to provide a Live-CD of XFDOS. Or you can download a hard disk version which allows you to start (and exit) the XFDOS desktop and its applications from your hard disk. http://code.google.com/p/nanox-microwindows-nxlib-fltk-for-dos/downloads/list

Georg adds:

XFDOS tries to provide common desktop applications used on Windows to FreeDOS users. These applications cannot provide all the features of their counterparts on Windows but they serve the same purpose. Below is a short comparison. (I hope the dots allow to format the table in text mode)

Application............Windows(R)..........XFDOS/FreeDOS

Web browser............Internet Explorer...Dillo
Word processing........MS Word.............FlWriter
Spreadsheet............MS Excel............Spreadsheet
Personal info manager..Outlook.............FlTDJ (no mail)
Editor.................Notepad.............Editor
Image editor...........MS Paint............Antipaint
PDF reader.............Acrobat.............MuPDF
File manager...........Explorer............Open file
Media player...........MS Media Player.....Mpxplay
Calculator.............MS Calculator.......FlCalc
Image viewer...........Photo Viewer........FlView

You are welcome to use XFDOS!

On April 3, Chris Evans released an update to the hex editor Hexed. Version 1.2c removed the boot sector code loader, too dangerous esp. when writing to hard disks. so you'll have to load sector with debug and edit the sector file with hexed instead. You can find it at ftp://digitalatoll.com/DMSOFT/hexed12c.zip or mirrored to ibiblio at http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/file/hex/hexed/