Notices by The FreeDOS Project (freedosproject@fosstodon.org)

@compfu @captainarcee
I'd never heard of Jazz before— thanks for the recommendation, I'll try it out! 👍

Now I'm curious to know: what's your favorite DOS game?

I will always love TIE Fighter, I replay that probably twice a year

Right now, I'm back into playing Simple Senet (I wrote that one, and it's in the FreeDOS distribution) 😀

ICYMI

Library of Congress inducts the DOOM soundtrack to the national library

https://newsroom.loc.gov/news/national-recording-registry-inducts-sounds-of-taylor-swift--beyonc---the-go-go-s--vince-gill--weezer/s/bc258688-e655-4ffb-9f91-f32b94956f36

“Doom” Soundtrack – Bobby Prince, composer (1993)
Originally released in 1993, the video game Doom brought a heavy metal energy to MS-DOS systems across the globe, while at the same time pioneering the ever-popular first-person shooter genre. Key to Doom’s popularity was the “Doom” Soundtrack

From the website

DUGL Player is a GUI video player for DOS systems, released by developer 'ffk' on February 28. The player supports WEBM and MPEG4. It's still in "alpha" status.

https://github.com/FFK77/DOS-DUGL/tree/main/duglproj/apps/DUGLPLAY

The FreeDOS files archive at Ibiblio seems to be really slooooow right now … but when it's back, you should check out the latest monthly test release: FreeDOS T2603 (March 2026)

Try it and help test the next FreeDOS version!

✅ New FreeDOS kernel 2044
✅ Updated packages

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/test/

From the website:
Victoria Crenshaw has been working on updates to FDNPKG16, a network-aware package manager for FreeDOS. Victoria shared version 0.99.8253a with several bug fixes and updates.

latest version: https://4ch.mooo.com/freedos/repos/1.4/net/fdnpkg16.zip

devel version: https://github.com/sparky4/fdnpkg16/raw/refs/heads/main/fdnpkg16.zip

From the website: Thanks to Laaca for sharing a new version of the Fontana font editor.

Changes in 1.2 include: + support for unproportional (monospaced) mode + CPI archives can be saved also in WinNT subformat + default font for cp852 now contains euro symbol + overview of undefined characters in given range.

https://www.laaca.borec.cz/blocek/#fontana

From the website: After more than a year since the last release, there now is release 10 of lDebug (that's a small L). This is an advanced line-oriented debugger for DOS.

The new release contains some bugfixes and a few added features.

https://pushbx.org/ecm/web/#projects-ldebug

@dec_hl Back in the days of Usenet, there were also programs that went the other way: converts a compiled exe so it can be transmitted in plain text, and still run. I recall that the unzoo program was distributed this way. 🤓

Inspired by some folks who have been exploring #FORTRAN 77 programming on FreeDOS, I wanted to share these programming gems:

Arithmetic If
Computed Goto
Assigned Goto

https://www.both.org/?p=11217

They are excellent ways to add subtle bugs to your programs. 🤓😂🪳

Try them out using Open Watcom FORTRAN on FreeDOS.

If you want to get started with DOS programming, here's an example of a fun graphics program you can write:

https://allthingsopen.org/articles/intro-dos-graphics-programming

➡️ The Sierpinski Triangle is a fractal image that you can generate by drawing a series of random pixels to the screen.

This seems wrong somehow 😂

That's MS-EDIT running on #Linux on my #RaspberryPi

On June 29, 1994, I announced what turned into the FreeDOS Project.

That's 31 years ago today! And I thought what better way to celebrate the anniversary than by showing how to install FreeDOS.

We released FreeDOS 1.4 in April, so it's been out for a while. If you haven't installed 1.4 yet, here's what it looks like:

https://youtu.be/4H0TWZocJZY

In June 1994, several of us had a pretty neat idea: let's make our own version of DOS and give away the source code.

So on June 29, 1994, I announced a new project that would become FreeDOS!

If you missed it, here's an article I wrote last year for the Open Source Initiative's website about how FreeDOS started and why we celebrate everyone who contributes to open source software! 🤩

https://opensource.net/30-years-open-source-freedos/

ICYMI

Darik Horn's Retro7zip is a native backport of 7-Zip for DOS. Darik has released 7-Zip version 24.09+3 for DOS, which you can download at GitHub:

https://github.com/dajhorn/retro7zip/releases/

ICYMI

mTCP is a set of TCP/IP applications for personal computers running DOS.

Version 2025-01-10 has some changes that improve reliability. The NetDrive device driver and source code is also available now.

Download the new version from the mTCP website:

https://www.brutman.com/mTCP/

I still love my Pocket'386 to run FreeDOS on real hardware.

If you missed it, here's Lukas's article from last year about setting up FreeDOS on the Pocket'386:

https://www.root.cz/clanky/pocket-386-freedos-na-malem-notebooku-se-spoustou-konektoru/

You already know about FreeDOS 1.4 RC1, released on January 1. We're trying to get the word out as far as we can, so I've also been sharing articles about it.

Here's my article for All Things Open about getting started with FreeDOS 1.4 Release Candidate 1

https://allthingsopen.org/articles/getting-started-with-freedos-1-4-release-candidate-1

This provides an overview of what's in RC1, plus a step-by-step guide to install FreeDOS 1.4 RC1. Help us to find bugs so we can make RC2 (February) that much better!

I don't have a need to redirect DOS to a serial port, but I just learned about BIOSCOM and I'm intrigued, wanted to share: 🙂

"BIOSCOM - This is a DOS TSR program that sends the contents of a text mode display to a serial port in an ANSI terminal compatible format. Does not use DOS syscalls. Works with all DOS implementations."

http://sininenankka.dy.fi/leetos/software.php

@gumnos Thanks to everyone who has helped with this FreeCOM version - including Jeremy (maintainer) and contributors TK Chia, Bitigchi, Andrewbird, Joshux, Boeckmann, and Jmalak.