The upcoming FreeDOS 1.2 is starting to get some attention. Some recent coverage: SourceForge.net named FreeDOS as their September 2016 Staff Pick Of The Month. Also in September, OpenSource.com wrote about FreeDOS as Keeping DOS alive and kicking with open source - an article that also ranked in the top five most-read articles that week! As always, we track these and other news items on our FreeDOS History timeline. If you see FreeDOS in the news, and it's not on our History page, please let us know!

Blocek is a text editor for DOS with unicode support. It means that unlike other DOS editors you are not limited to your current code page. It allows you to edit multilanguage documents, translate texts from one language to another, write modern web pages and so on. Alternatively can be also used as image viewer (BMP, PCX, GIF, PNG, JPG and WMF). Blocek 1.5b is a minor version with new features, including: + now can display the Exif info in JPEG files and export the Exif data; + can resize big images to optimaly fit the screen; + can now properly display the semi-standard VGA fonts; and bug fixes. Download from here: Blocek website.

The LPX Podcast recently posted an interview with Jim about FreeDOS. From the podcast website: "A generation of computer users grew up using Microsoft DOS in the 80s and 90s, but Microsoft started to phase out the operating system with the launch of Windows 95. Decades later, there are still people playing DOS-based games and even corporations using DOS-based software. For more than two decades the developers of FreeDOS have been offering a free and open source alternative to Microsoft’s defunct operating system. I reached out to Jim Hall for a conversation about FreeDOS, classic computing, and free software." The podcast episode is about 30 minutes.

If you are new to FreeDOS and are looking for how to contribute, may I suggest the FDSHELL program? This project aims to implement similar functionality to the old MS-DOS DOSSHELL.EXE program: a file manager, application launcher, and task switcher as either a TUI or GUI. Written in VisualBASIC For DOS (with some Assembly) the program hasn't been updated since at least 2013; development stalled at version 0.10(beta). It would be great to see new development on this interesting program. For example, you might use FLTK for the GUI, or update the program to use C/C++.

On July 1, mikulas released Links 2.13, the lightweight web browser for both text and graphics modes. Read the changelog, grab (GPLv2+) sources, and grab DJGPP binaries, also mirrored on iBiblio. Thanks!