Play classic games
Play DOS games on FreeDOS! We include lots of fun games in the distribution. Or play your favorite classic games, like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Commander Keen, Jill of the Jungle, Duke Nukem, and many others!
Welcome to FreeDOS
FreeDOS is an open source DOS-compatible operating system that you can use to play classic DOS games, run legacy business software, or write new DOS programs. Any program that works on MS-DOS should also run on FreeDOS.
Run applications
Run your favorite DOS programs with FreeDOS. Just install your DOS application under FreeDOS like you would any other DOS application and you'll be good to go.
For developers
We include lots of open source compilers, assemblers, debuggers, and editors so you can create your own DOS programs. We also share our source code under an open source license, so you can modify FreeDOS itself.
What’s New
XPL0 Programming Language
If you're interested in learning a new programming language, you might be interested in XPL0. From the website: "XPL0 is essentially a cross between Pascal and C. It looks somewhat like Pascal but works more like C. It was originally created in 1976 by Peter J. R. Boyle, who designed it to run on a 6502 microprocessor as an alternative to BASIC." XPL0 is available under the GNU GPL2. More information at the XPL0 website.
MicroWeb DOS web browser
MicroWeb is a web browser for DOS that runs as a 16-bit real mode application and is designed to run on minimal hardware. To run it, you will need at least an 8088 CPU, CGA/EGA/VGA/Hercules graphics, network interface, at least 640k memory. Basically, any DOS machine should run this. The latest release is version 2.1, which includes XMS memory support, simple file download support, optimized memory usage, and several bug fixes. Get it from MicroWeb 2.1 on GitHub
FDNPKG16 version 0.99.8253d
Victoria continues to update the FDNPKG command-line network-aware package manager. The newest release includes an updated Kitten library to support multiple languags, and now has / support so you can use more DOS-like command line options. The latest version is at FDNPKG16 releases. Please download and help with testing.
VCode programmer editor for FreeDOS
Stefan Mader created a very interesting editor that programmers may find useful: VCode is a Text/Hex-Editor and NC-like file manager for DOS. Stefan notes that it's "not yet optimized for performance or stage space" but it works well on real hardware. The editor runs in graphics mode, so you get a higher resolution, which means more lines of text. And I find it is clear enough for writing code. You can find it at VCode on GitHub
Try the FreeDOS Monthly Test Release
You can help test FreeDOS by downloading the monthly test release. This is a "preview" or "test" version of the FreeDOS distribution that we release every month (thanks to Jerome for making the distributions!) The monthly test releases are named like Tyymm, like T2603 for "March 2026," and contain all of the latest updates so you can see how things work together. Read the "changes.log" file to see what's changed in each test release. The big changes in T2603 include: new versions of fdnpkg16, country.sys, ldebug .. and notably, the new FreeDOS Kernel with support to run Windows 3.x. We've updated the FreeDOS Download page with a link to get the monthly test release.
dev86 BCC 0.16.21 and 1.0.1
Ben Collver has been working to compile the BCC compiler in 16-bit DOS. BCC is "Bruce's C Compiler," an old "barely ANSI" C compiler that produces 8086 assembler for tiny/small models. Ben recently shared versions for testing. He adds: "The 32-bit version requires HXRT to run on DOS" and "0.6.21 and 1.0.1 are both OpenWatcom builds. The compiler is too large to compile itself." Version 0.16.21 is probably the one to try, as Ben notes that "1.0.1 has a bunch of changes, some good, and others i don't trust yet. So i am keeping both copies around for now." You can find it at Ben's BCC page. We've also mirrored it on the FreeDOS Files Archive at Ibiblio under files/devel/c/bcc. Note: Ibiblio is currently running very slow.