A new version of DOS - or disk operating system - has been released by an online community, almost two decades after Microsoft stopped supporting the system.
At the beginning of this month, FreeDOS.org announced the release FreeDOS 1.1, an update issued 17 years after the organisation started working on the operating system, according to a timeline compiled by 'Eric L'ev'enez.
L'ev'enez's timeline indicates that FreeDOS alpha 0.05 was issued in January 1998, and followed by further alpha and beta versions, before being released as version one in 2006. The next update, version 1.1, was released at the beginning of this year.
DOS was originally released as QDOS 0.1 in August 1988, and PC-DOS was then issued a year later. In June 1982, MS-DOS 1.24 was issued, according to L'ev'enez's timeline.
However, although the system can still be used through Windows, the dominant platform, Microsoft has not supported it for several years. Windows was announced in November 1983.
Jim Hall, who started writing the software, writes in a blog that he “never intended to write a free operating system, but circumstances dictated otherwise”.
In 1994, when Microsoft announced it would stop supporting the system, he was a college senior, majoring in physics, Hall writes.
“I used the DOS operating system to do my data analysis for labs, write papers and physics reports, dial into the university network, and write small programs to help make my life easier. I like the simplicity that DOS offers.”
Hall says Microsoft's announcement that it would stop supporting MS-DOS was a “bit of a surprise”. Although the software giant had released Windows 3.11, DOS was still a popular tool, he says.
Hall launched public domain (PD) DOS, which was eventually renamed to FreeDOS and became a collective effort. FreeDOS is a free DOS-compatible operating system for IBM-type PCs and is made up of separate programs that act as 'packages' to the overall FreeDOS Project, the organisation says on its Web site.
Steven Ambrose, MD of Strategy Worx, says DOS lives on in the under side of Windows and is the “most basic interpreter between hardware and the screen”.
Ambrose explains the system is simple enough to run on very old PCs, such as X86 boxes, and facilitates many business and manufacturing programs that do not require the complexity of a Windows or Linux system.
FreeDOS supports network access, which enables basic e-mail and Internet, notes Ambrose. “It's surprisingly functional at a low level. They launched the space shuttle with this level of technology.”
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