note: this wiki is quite frustrating, I see no acceptable reason:
- why the word \"conwerting\" is banned
- why is it so difficult to find it out
Note: this text is highly obsolete. It describes the:
2005-11-30 FreeDOS Beta9 distribution, Service Release 2 distro.
This will be the last Beta release before assigning FreeDOS the "1.0 (preview)" label, which is expected before Christmas 2005. Happy new year :)
This really was the last beta release, but FreeDOS 1.0 was delayed to 2006-09-03.
It is strongly recommended to use FreeDOS 1.0 and not the 0.9bSR2 one, to update critical packages and get 1.1 as soon as it comes out
Many relevant and some serious bugs were found in 0.9bSR2 and are fixed in 1.0, for example:
- KERNEL (FAT32 handling, memory, software compatibility, ...)
- FREECOM
- EMM386&HIMEM (compatibility with various programs and DOS extenders - get HIMEMX 3.32 and JEMM 5.72)
- DEFRAG (Get 1.31 version, is usable on FAT16 now)
Note: if you are interested in a single ready to run FreeDOS diskette, download the appropriate (usually 1440KB) diskette image below instead of the full distribution.
Please see the making FreeDOS disks section on how to use these files.
2005-11-30 FreeDOS Beta9 distribution, Service Release 2
As of December 2005, an updated official FreeDOS distribution will be available on Ibiblio and Fdos.org. It replaces the exactly 1 year old (and in software terms quite outdated) Beta9SR1 distribution. This release is available as an ISO image and as a diskette distribution in various sizes: You can install from a set of 1440k or 2880k diskettes, sets for 1200k, 720k or 360k drives are available on demand. If you do have a cdrom drive but cannot boot from it, use the first disk of the diskette distribution to boot and then continue installation from the cdrom. You can even copy the cdrom image or cdrom contents to harddisk and then boot from diskette if you cannot have cdrom and diskette drive connected at the same time. Please see the readme file for more information about obtaining and installing FreeDOS. Alternatively, have a look at the FreeDOS installation WIKI which features more recent documentation.
Direct downloads
Note that we recommend the bootable CD-ROM as primary installation source, because it's best tested and the bootdisk image inside it features a stable driver for accessing the distribution's data.
Online installation guide
Please have a look at our comprehensive online installation guide for end-users. The links below each page are meant for navigating through the guide.
What's new in this release
- Improve working towards FreeDOS 1.0
- Porting of several FreeDOS programs to the freely available Openwatcom compiler.
- Internationalisation support, kernel now has support for country.sys
- Language files splitted in their own packages.
- Isolinux chain support for setting various options.
- Better internationalisation support by automatic configuration based on selected language.
- Support for not only installation from cdrom, diskette, directory and ISO located on harddisk, but now also for downloading the installation cdrom image from internet by FTP & HTTP.
- Support for storing the installation cdrom image on other cdroms as a datafile.
- Once again, improved setup procedure so you get the partition menu as early as possible if harddisk does not contain a partition with suitable filesystem for installation.
- Experimental: MS Windows 3.1 runs if you select to run with XMS only (option 2). (Currently broken due to too experimental kernel patches, but WIN /S (not possible with Windows for Workgroups) works with normal kernel already)
- Experimental: ReactOS 0.2.8 and later can be started from DOS as a desktop environment for 586 (any Pentium) or later with at least 32MB (VMware: 64MB). Requires GRUB4DOS
- Experimental: Installing Windows from FreeDOS has been integrated into the installer (press "?" at the final menu which asks if you want to reboot or not).
Updated packages
- Kernel v2.0.35B-DEV, made available by interim kernel maintainer Kenneth J Davis. Supports the NLS & codepage chain (COUNTRY, DISPLAY, NLSFUNC, MODE, KEYB)
- SYS v3.6A, also by Jeremy Davis.
- FreeCOM v0.84pre, solving a few FreeCOM issues but creating others (example: broken LH )
- EMM386 and HIMEM v2.08 by Tom Ehlert and Michael Devore contributes improved compatibility and stability, as well as support for VDS, VCPI and a mixed memory pool
- SHSUCD v3.02 suite, containing SHSUCDX and other cdrom related utilities from Jason Hood
- Memtest86+ v1.65
- Move 3.3, solves some bugs and now supports multiple languages
- Edlin 2.8, by Gregory Pietsch, now uses KITTEN runtime language files in addition to compile time language files
- Xcopy 1.3, now supports multiple languages
- MEM 1.9, improved by David o'Shea. Still in alpha stage though (8086 incompatible)
- DISPLAY 0.12, one of the latest versions before conwerting it to a device driver
- KEYB 2.0 series with improved keyboard layout support (not only layout files but also collections of them, like KEYBOARD.SYS
- Many other programs. A lot happens in a single year
New packages
- NLSFUNC, for adding codepage support to FreeDOS (CHCP now works)
- SrDisk v2.09, a ramdisk driver recently released under the GPL
- ShsuFdrv v1.01, a freeware program for mounting disk images and assigning driveletters to them. Released by Jason Hood
- ShsuRdrv v1.10, a freeware ramdisk driver which can create a ramdisk up to 2GB, mirror (cache) existing diskettes in extended memory and mount (compressed) diskette images in memory. See also ODIN in top of this page
- XDMA v2.8, an independent contribution from Jack R Ellis, the co-author of the UDMA series and author of UDMA2 series. These drivers enable UltraDMA mode for IDE controllers.