Erwin Waterlander released WCD 5.2.6, the "Wherever Change Directory" tool. WCD is a command-line program to change directory fast. It saves time typing at the keyboard. One needs to type only a part of a directory name and WCD can jump to it. This release has only minor updates and bug fixes - read the full What's New for details. You can get it from the WCD website.

We've updated the FreeDOS Road Map! The Road Map defines the next several release cycles of FreeDOS, and is generated through discussion and consensus on the freedos-devel mailing list. Here are a few highlights from the updated Road Map: FreeDOS "1.2" and "2.0" will remain 16-bit. 1.2 will be a refresh with a new installer, 2.0 will focus on userspace. FreeDOS-32 is not on the Road Map.

Harold (aka Mercury Thirteen) has volunteered to put together the new FreeDOS 1.2 distribution. FreeDOS 1.2 is planned to be a refresh to FreeDOS 1.1, using updated packages, although it will also use a new version of the installer and a simplified install process. We have started a discussion of FreeDOS 1.2 on the freedos-devel list. If you would like to help put together the FreeDOS 1.2 distribution, please email Harold at Mercury Thirteen.

Laszlo announced that the first public version (0.9 beta) of the AGUI user interface library is available for download. AGUI is a fairly complete GUI library for DOS, Windows, and Linux. It is based on the Allegro game development library. Its primary purpose is to develop applications for DOS. (Windows and Linux compatibility is provided so that the initial development of the application's interface can be done in a more friendly environment.) The library is free software, distributed under the GNU LGPL 2. You can find it here: * source code + build stuff * binaries compiled for DOS (DJGPP) * binaries compiled for Windows (MinGW) * AGUI reference manual

Harold (aka Mercury Thirteen) has posted a small DRIVES utility to display the drive letters available on your system, and what they are (hard drive, floppy drive, CDROM, etc). Includes source code. You can find it at his website: drives.zip

On Oct. 19, Jack Ellis updated his UIDE etc. drivers. Changes:
"UHDD now 'overlaps' cache work during UltraDMA disk output and the disk sector 'gap' at I-O end, for greater speed! UHDD /M switch deleted, 256-byte binary search buffer is now permanent." See his freedos-user post for more details. Grab binaries and sources on iBiblio under dos/ellis .

On Sep. 27, Jack Ellis updated his UIDE etc. drivers. Changes: "UHDD now offers all 4 UIDE caches, conditional-assembly no longer required! New UHDD /M switch can set a 512-byte binary search buffer for improved speed." See his freedos-user post for more details. Grab binaries and sources on iBiblio under dos/cdrom/uide .

Erwin Waterlander released dos2unix 7.0. See web site for more details. Changes include: * option -u to keep UTF-16 encoding. * option -v to print information about BOMs and converted line breaks. * stdio mode does not automatically set quiet mode or force conversion of binaries. Fixes include: * DOS line breaks from Mac line breaks. * Unicode input files and 7bit and iso modes. Download and try it out.

While not an official FreeDOS distribution, CarbonOS is a new operating system based on FreeDOS, designed to be easy to use. CarbonOS is intended for users with no previous DOS experience. Features include a 4DOS command line, long file name support, silent boot. Screenshots and download available from the CarbonOS website. It's in alpha release, and a version 0.3.0Alpha bootable CD image is available. (CarbonOS replaces the earlier LightDOS distribution.)

Hjort Nidudsson has made a new Doszip Commander version 2.52, which is available under GNU GPL v2. Doszip Commander is an LFN-aware text-based file manager (similar to NC) with built-in zip and unzip. The original program was written in Borland C, but the latest version compiles with Open Watcom and JWasm. You can get version 2.52 from the Doszip Commander website or more directly from doszip/files/DOS. Doszip Commander is also mirrored at ibiblio under util/file/doszip.