Everything DOS

If so, do you remember how to start the editor on a specific line number?

I tried some time ago to install it but got stuck along the way. I will have to try again to say where.

What is everyone running their FreeDOS on?

Ok, right now I am running FreeDOS under DosBox on my production laptop, but it might be nice to have a small machine, preferably a desktop, that will still boot in Legacy Mode.

Is there a machine I can buy new that I might be able to outfit with a 5.25 and 3.5 floppy drive? That can boot Legacy Mode? Extra points if it can also boot Legacy mode from a USB stick or Ventoy external drive!

Btw cost is an important consideration.

A dropbox link to SHELL - This is a command line shell that provides the following:

• point and activate all kinds of files
• Issue any command that you could type on the command line by just typing the command
• Select many files for operations such as copy, move, delete, print, anything you could do with one file from the command line.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5n29byg1gxsb7454ekmrc/SHELLSHA.ZIP?rlkey=3rvyzyycqtu011p6r4v5uorr6&dl=0

Note that there is a video (~24 minutes long; a transcript is available) accompanying the article.

This topic has come up several times in the mailing lists over the past months; here is one such example. It's a good article, and the summary of the mailing list link is that FreeDOS won't run on newer hardware.

Gnome Boxes offers a painless way to run FreeDOS, for anyone looking for an easy way to get up and running!

Announcement copied from the main page of the FreeDOS website:

" Please help us test the new release candidate (RC) for the FreeDOS 1.3 release! There are a ton of new changes and improvements from 1.2, including:

• New FreeCOM 0.85a
• New Kernel 2043 and an 8086 version with FAT32 support
• Floppy Edition now uses compression and requires about half as many diskettes
• The return of networking
• Some new programs and games
• Many many many package updates
• Some updates and improvements to NLS
• Improved install process, especially with the MBR
• Some support to automatically set the COUNTRY.SYS information
• Improved CD initialization for the boot media and installed system ... and much, much more! Get your copy of FreeDOS 1.3 RC5 from the FreeDOS Downloads page. Thanks to everyone for helping make this next FreeDOS 1.3 release candidate!

Things are looking pretty good in this release. We'd love to make this the last release candidate before the official release of "FreeDOS 1.3." You can help make that happen by downloading FreeDOS 1.3 RC5 and testing all the programs! Let us know of any bugs or compatibility issues so we can fix them. "

(link above is to the FreeDOS 1.3 RC5 downloads page)

Pictured above: a printout of an unformatted NRO source document (see link at bottom to get a PostScript or Plaintext copy)

What is NRO?

'NRO is a text processor based on the design provided in "Software Tools" by Kernighan and Plauger.' -- taken from the NRO description

(link: https://gitlab.com/FDOS/unix/nro/-/blob/master/HELP/NRO)

But that's not exactly helpful, is it? Put more simply, NRO is nroff for FreeDOS. Not sure what nroff is? For the GNU/Linux user, it's the program that makes manpages look the way they do. The GNU version used for GNU/Linux is called groff. For those unfamiliar, each line beginning with a period (.sp 2 for example) starts a formatting command. The letters specify which command is meant. All other lines contain the text that will be formatted. To learn more about nroff, look at the following Wikipeidia article on troff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troff

Or visit the related Lemmy:

• https://lemmy.ml/c/groff

  (it's new: first post coming soon, but the sidebar has some info)

Does DOS need this? If so, why?

Good question! I am unsure. Nonetheless, it does its intended job well. It's possible to make easily readable documentation for DOS this way. However, groff can also be used for professional typesetting, akin to LaTeX, albeit with easier and simpler syntax. As I use groff primarily for this purpose, I was curious to see how the NRO version fared. For that, we turn to a printout of my NRO document:

The printout looks awful, and that's mostly due to the monospaced "typewriter font" that it's formatted with. Can this be remedied? Not without printing the document on a real PostScript printer with another font, I would think. Why don't I know for certain? I am printing this to PDF on Linux using CUPS, which creates a PDF document using the processed NRO output. Turning away from the font however, it's clear to see NRO did some fairly remarkable things to the source file. There is a header, an automatically numbered page, various indenting, bolded text, reasonable margins, and all the fragmented lines in the source file have been joined together to fill the page. Wow! It's just like every other word processor! But the real question is: should you start to use NRO? Probably not, unless you already use groff on GNU/Linux already, and want to continue to use it in FreeDOS.

Is there a better way to produce professional looking PostScript and PDF documents in FreeDOS? Up next on my schedule is exploring TeX in FreeDOS.

All the files shown here can be located / downloaded at the following address: https://github.com/sennler/nro/tree/main/EXAMPLES

Have you ever wished there were a proper desktop for your DOS system, and thought that the GUI options, like Ozone or Seal, weren't quite cutting it? They don't really come with much software integrated into the GUI, and the transition back to command line is rather jarring. What if I told you there were a better, more useful alternative?

Well, thanks to TheOuterLinux (link: https://theouterlinux.gitlab.io/), there's now an excellent TUI (text user interface) desktop for DOS! Packed with tons of useful software, such as web browsers, file managers, music players, and even a lock screen, PsychDOS offers an alternative to the entirely command line driven DOS while playing to the strengths text mode offers.

Get PsychDOS: https://psychoslinux.gitlab.io/DOS/INDEX.HTM

Still on the fence about trying it out? Don't just take my word for it! FreeDOS founder Jim Hall provides an overview of PsychDOS on the FreeDOS YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQCiZtnJekU

Featured image: PsychDOS Page 3.5

(link: https://psychoslinux.gitlab.io/DOS/IMAGES/PAGE35.JPG)

Image Attribution: TheOuterLinux

Image License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

More PsychDOS images: https://psychoslinux.gitlab.io/DOS/SCRNSHOT.HTM