
DOS is long dead, long live FreeDOS - CrankyBear
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/452826/developer_interview_dos_long_dead_long_live_freedos/
======
kijin
Here's an interesting anecdote about FreeDOS.

In South Korea, a surprisingly large number of online merchants sell brand-new
PCs with FreeDOS on it. FreeDOS PCs are usually around $100 cheaper than their
Windows 7/8 counterparts, so these products have an advantage when the buyer
uses a price comparison service.

The official story is that since most people nowadays already have a spare
license of Windows from their old PC, they can just install it on their new
PCs instead of buying Windows again. Of course, this is bullshit, because the
"spare license" is likely to be an OEM copy that is tied to the old PC. But it
doesn't matter, because everyone understands that you're supposed to install a
pirated copy of Windows on your FreeDOS PC. So for tech-savvy Korean
consumers, FreeDOS just means pirated Windows. A rather unpalatable
association for a piece of free software to have, IMO.

On the other hand, if you actually install a legitimate copy of Windows, you
get to enjoy a complete lack of bloatware that manufacturers usually impose on
PC buyers. The PC comes with a CD that contains the necessary device drivers
and nothing else.

~~~
yuhong
I wonder why it would be $100 cheaper. OEMs are supposed to get a discount.
But yea, the exchange rates etc are why MS provides geographically restricted
versions of Windows.

~~~
bad_user
It's not just in South Korea. It happens in Romania/Europe too and in fact PCs
with Windows bundled sometimes are $200 more expensive.

Microsoft may or may not have anything to do with it. It might be that these
PC manufacturers provide Windows for their more expensive models as a way for
differentiating them from the cheaper ones. Also not all manufacturers get the
same deal.

For example I bought a Thinkpad E530 without Windows on it. The other model
that was available to me had the same specs, plus an extra 16 GB SSD mSata and
Windows and was $270 more expensive. I got the cheaper model and I replaced
the hard-drive with a 256 GB SSD, which was a far better deal.

Personally I'm glad that this happens, because I don't run Windows and it
would be pretty bad if I had to pay the Windows tax.

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astral303
Oh man, this tugs on all sorts of sentimental DOS strings. Especially that
first phrase about people under 30 not knowing what DOS is.

When was the last time you have used the B: drive?

Anyway, an interesting thing is that growing up in Russia, using DOS, we were
all gung-ho about using Norton Commander and its clones, such as DOS
Navigator, to supplement the vanilla command-line DOS experience.

And I'm telling you, it was oh such a great experience, that to this day, I
still wonder how I manage to get by in my vanilla command line bash shell.
Sure, all the auto-complete tricks are insanely useful (and maybe that's all
we really needed?), but I recall the whole two-directory layout was super
useful in being able to move files around and do quick edits and what not.
Midnight Commander just doesn't do it for me. I tried FAR Manager on Windows,
and also no dice. They all feel heavy and not as natural.

To put it into perspective, anyone who's really really into VIM, think about
how you love how fast you can be with VIM, despite the obscure key
combinations and the modal overhead (haha, bias showing?). Anyway, think about
how once you get used to all that power, you wonder how you can survive
without it anywhere else. That's what using Norton Commander /DOS Navigator
was like in MS-DOS. Using a Solaris/HP-UX command line circa 1998 felt like
going back to stone age.

~~~
thristian
I was a Norton Commander fan back in the days of DOS, and so when I moved to
Linux, I've always had a soft-spot for Midnight Commander... just, you know,
not enough to actually _use_ it for anything.

It's always puzzled me that Norton Commander was so indispensable for DOS, but
Midnight Commander is not so useful under Linux. I think the reason is just
that the file-management I do these days is very different from what I needed
to do under DOS; I don't have to copy files around to or from floppies to
transfer them, nor do I have to shuffle files around from one partition to
another to maintain enough disk space. I don't even have to navigate between
all the different directories where my apps are installed, because in Linux
they're all on my $PATH.

Using MC, I really miss bash's tab-completion (Esc-Tab completion isn't the
same) although ^S incremental search helps. The NC copy/move/rename dialogs
are really designed around the MS-DOS semantics of filename globbing (under
DOS, you can say "copy _.doc_.bak" to make a backup of every document, but "cp
_.doc_.bak" does something very different in Linux), so coping/moving/renaming
files in Midnight Commander feels weird.

I dunno, I _want_ to like Midnight Commander, but I just think it's a
brilliantly-designed user-interface for solving problems that don't exist, or
don't exist in the same form, as they did in MS-DOS.

~~~
dredmorbius
As someone who dislikes GUI file navigators, the two uses I find for MC are as
a file archive explorer and for remote file operations. MC will open tarballs
of various compression variants, ar archives, etc., and in particular, RPM and
DEB files). Want to dig out something without expanding and digging through
the archive? Use MC.

Similarly, you can access remote systems (via ssh) as if they were local,
though I'll more often use lftp's fish:// protocol. Or lately, sshfs.

Which I suppose more or less makes your point that under Linux these are
mostly solved problems.

------
pixelbeat
Also dosbox is really cool:

<http://www.pixelbeat.org/misc/dosbox/>

~~~
libria
As is its Chrome port, NaClBox:

<http://www.naclbox.com/>

~~~
shoopy
This is amazing. Quite an impressive demonstration of Native Client's
capabilities.

------
Tekker
I have Windows 7 and still work in the DOS box daily. First tried DOS 1.0,
have been using it consistently since 3.0, and it really took off after 5.0
(was a beta tester for DOS 5.0). Can't imagine functioning in Windows without
DOS/command prompt, although I know it sucks, functionality-wise compared to
Linux command shell.

~~~
nikatwork
I highly recommend Cygwin, which will give you a "proper" bash shell in
Windows.

Also, Console2 makes working with the cmd prompt slightly more bearable
(easier copy and paste etc).

~~~
cantankerous
As much as I don't want to, I think I need to point out that Cygwin has been
so much of a bother to me that I now find it more convenient to just install
Linux inside Virtual Box as a better free alternative. Cygwin was good before
all these virtualization tools became so available, but now I find it
incredibly frustrating and lacking compared to a traditional Linux OS, which
is easily accessible now from a Windows environment.

EDIT: Console2 is nice, though. I can get behind that.

~~~
wtallis
A VM doesn't let you use unix tools to operate on your Windows filesystem,
which is my main reason for installing cygwin.

~~~
sut101
You can mount your Windows file system either through Samba or VirtualBox's
shared folders feature.

------
wglb
Many of the top Ham Radio contesters us this as one of the best contest
programs, TR Log, runs only in DOS.

------
laurent123456
I'm not sure what makes them say that DOS is dead. There are and there will
always be plenty of command line tools on Windows, so there's no way Microsoft
is going to completely remove the shell.

~~~
malkia
But that's the command-line shell (it's a 32-bit Windows process), not 16-bit
DOS with optional Extended/unreal mode. This is no longer supported since XP
(one of the reasons to keep XP, or have it installed as Windows XP mode on
Windows Vista, 7, etc.).

There are plenty of good games for DOS that I still play - Heroes of Might And
Magic, Star Control, Archon, Alley Cat, Digger, many others.

~~~
justin66
> But that's the command-line shell (it's a 32-bit Windows process), not
> 16-bit DOS with optional Extended/unreal mode. This is no longer supported
> since XP (one of the reasons to keep XP, or have it installed as Windows XP
> mode on Windows Vista, 7, etc.).

I'm not 100% sure, but 99%, that you'll find that it's still supported in the
32-bit versions of Vista and 7.

