FreeDOS stuff -- page last updated: January 19, 2009
(links in bold mean open source)
This page needs massive improvements and is still under construction! (Man, I suck ...)


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Other (slightly older) FreeDOS distros
Joris made an 8086 compatible variant of the updated first diskette of Eric's 1.0 three diskette distro. Also check out Balder (intended to replace ODIN, whose version using ye olde FreeDOS beta9r2 in various sizes can still be downloaded here). Or get an official FreeDOS 1.0++ .ISO to burn to CD-R ( readme.txt ). N.B. I also have a rough list of updated packages since last year's FreeDOS 1.0 release: FDPKGNEW.TXT (as of Aug. 11), if you're curious.

Add DOS to preinstalled Windows
Misc. DOS-related stuff


P.S. DOSBox 0.72 can negate the bad DOS gaming capability of your Windows OS (esp. Vista), if you want to experience true retro bliss. Otherwise, try QEMU 0.9.1 or BOCHS 2.3.7. Also, *nix users may appreciate using DOSEMU 1.4.0.

Pocket PC / handheld users may wish to try the shareware PocketDOS 1.12.2 (for 16-bit 80186 stuff, anyways; see their screenshots)

You may also want to try Joris' Retro 0.4 (tiny 8086 emulator in Java, runs DOS or Minix or even Windows 2.0). His FreeDOS floppy image files are MUCH more 8086-compatible than any of mine so far. Or try JPC (another Java emulator, more complete but slower, which can run more recent DOS games within your web browser).

For older computers, Damn Small Linux (aka, DSL) 3.4.12 / 4.4.10 is "only" (heh) a 50 MB .ISO download but bootable and nicely extensible with optional packages (e.g. DOSBox 0.63, Wine 0.9.22, GCC/G++ 3.3.4). You can even use it in Windows with QEMU (see their "embedded" download)! Another good, "relatively" small (< 100 MB) GNU/Linux distro was PuppyLinux when it was 2.16, but currently is 4.1.2 (2.6.x kernel; Flash/YouTube works out of the box) but sadly now needs 128 MB RAM or more. Yet another lite distro for older computers (for use with less than 32 MB RAM, unlike Puppy) was DeLi Linux 0.7.2 (2.4.x kernel, see forum for unofficial liveCD), which had the latest DOSEMU as a simple add-on package. Unfortunately, DeLi 0.8.0 added Unicode and bloated up too big (e.g. P2 w/ 64 MB minimum now). Or try dyne:bolic, intended to run on P1/MMX + 64 MB RAM. Or try the latest / last ZipSlack (2.4.x kernel, UMSDOS / Slackware 11.0), which optionally boots from DOS (like DOS-Minix or OctaOS). For CLI-only fans (w00t!), try INX.

Oh, and there's a also tiny gfx www (links via SVGALIB, links_text)/IRC (rhapsody)/telnet two-floppy Linux distro called BlueFlops 2.0.15 (newer 2.6.18 Linux kernel than the outdated, overformatted, single-floppy 2.2.20ext3 tomsrtbt, which only has wget/telnet only), at least. Or if you're really minimalistic, try BasicLinux 3.50 (2.2.x kernel, old libc5, compatible with Slackware 4.0) which uses 20 MB of space on top of your FAT partition (UMSDOS).

If you want a "100% free/libre" GNU/Linux distro (liveCD), try gNewSense 2.1.

Whatever floats your boat. Oh, and Viva la DOS! :-)