Freeos1

FreeOS/1 is a planned operating system based on FreeDOS for IBM PC compatible and many other computers, such as the vintage PowerPC based Apple Macintosh. FreeOS/1 is made up of many different, separate programs that act as "packages" to the overall FreeOS/1 Project. As a member of the DOS and Windows 9x family, it will provide disk access through its kernel, will have advanced memory management features and will have a GNOME / Xfce GUI ported from Linux. FreeOS/1 is currently in planning / pre-alpha stage, consisting of just the FreeDOS base and other files to be ported.
FreeOS /1 supports vintage hardware IBM PC as well as modern ones, in addition to embedded computers. Unlike MS-DOS and Windows 95/98/Me, it is composed of free and open source software, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). It does not require license fees or royalties and creation of custom distributions is permitted.
History
The FreeOS/1 project began on August 15, 2009 after Microsoft announced, after some time, it would no longer sell Windows XP and discontinue support of it after 2014, and after various users found Windows 7 to be very hardware demanding for vintage computers and netbooks. Daniel Covert (programmer/project creator) then posted an idea proposing the development of a faster, FreeDOS based open-source replacement as the React-OS team had not finished their version of an open-source NT clone. Within a few weeks, other programmers joined the project.
Distribution
FreeOS/1 is not available for download as of December 19th, 2009
Planned Compatibility
* PowerPC based Apple Macintosh and Consoles
* ARM Based Smart Phones / PDAs / and Smart books
* SPARC based workstations and future consoles
* MIPS based Consoles
* x86/x64 based PCs and netbooks / Nettops
* Windows 95/98/Me/XP/Vista/7 software / driver compatibility
* 'nix software / driver compatibility (Linux/Unix)
MS-DOS and Win32 console
FreeOS/1 is mostly compatible with MS-DOS. It supports .COM executables, standard DOS executables and Borland's 16-bit DPMI executables. The operating system will have several improvements relative to MS-DOS and Windows 95/98/Me, mostly involving support of newer standards and technologies that did not exist when Microsoft ended support for Windows 95/98/Me, such as multi-core and multi-thread support, USB device support, a x64 bit kernel, and NTFS support. Many Win32 console applications function properly in FreeOS/1.
Windows 1.0 to 3.xx
FreeOS/1 is able to run Microsoft Windows 1.0 and 2.0 releases. Windows 3.x releases, which had support for i386 processors, can be run in 386 Enhanced Mode.
Windows 9x and Windows Millennium Edition
Windows 95, 98 and Me use a stripped down version of MS-DOS as a bootloader. FreeOS/1 can not be used as a replacement bootloader; however, it can be installed and used beside these systems using a boot manager program, such as the "METAKERN" included with FreeOS/1. Problems running Windows result from Microsoft's efforts to prevent their products running on non-Microsoft DOS implementations.
Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008 and ReactOS
Windows NT-based operating systems, including Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 7, and 2008 do not make use of MS-DOS as a core component of the system. These systems can make use of the FAT file systems, which are used by MS-DOS and earlier versions of Windows; however, they typically use the NTFS (NT File System) by default. FreeOS/1 can coexist on these systems on a separate partition on NTFS systems, or on the same partition on FAT systems. The FreeOS/1 kernel can be booted by adding it to the Windows NT Boot Loader configuration file, boot.ini, or freeldr.ini for ReactOS.
File systems
FAT32 is fully supported, even booting from it. Depending on the BIOS used, as many as four LBA hard disks up to 128 GB, or even 2 TB in size are supported. Care is recommended when using huge disks, since there was little testing so far, and some BIOSes support LBA but produce errors on disks larger than 32 GB. A driver like OnTrack or EzDrive resolves this problem. FreeOS/1 can also be used with a driver called DOSLFN, which supports long file names (see VFAT), but most old programs do not support long file names even if the driver is loaded. There is planned support for NTFS and ext2.
Universal Serial Bus
So far there is no USB driver support inside the FreeOS/1 project, but many modern motherboards contain BIOS settings for "Legacy USB" support which allow USB devices to be used in operating systems that lack support for them (such as FreeDOS). This applies to keyboards and mice, and some BIOSes can even support storage devices. There is planned support for USB drivers. Some external DOS USB drivers (such as DUSE, USBASPI and USBMASS) for storage devices work with some effort and luck. There is also DOSUSB which offers an API and supports storage devices, printers and serial adapters.
Features
* Easy multiboot with Win95-2003 and NT/XP/ME
* file system and large disk support (LBA)
* Long filename support via DOSLFN driver
* XDMA & XDVD - UDMA driver for hard discs and DVD players
* LBACACHE - disk cache
* SHSUCDX (MSCDEX replacement) and CD-ROM driver (XCDROM)
* CUTEMOUSE - Mouse driver with scroll wheel support
* FDAPM - APM info/control/suspend/poweroff, ACPI throttle, HLT energy saving..
* MPXPLAY - media player for mp3, ogg, wmv.. with built-in AC'97 and SB16 drivers ; has a user interface
* 7ZIP, INFO-ZIP, zip, unzip.. - modern archivers
* EDIT / SETEDIT - multi window text editors
* HTMLHELP - help viewer, can read help directly from a zip file
* PG - powerful text viewer (similar to V. D. Buerg's LIST)
* Many text mode programs ported from Linux thanks to DJGPP
* FreeCOM - command line, supports file completion
* 4DOS can be installed, which is an enhanced command line.
* GRAPHICS - greyscale hardcopy on ESC/P, HP PCL and PostScript printers
* Arachne - graphical web browser and e-mail client
* Fdupdate - update installer
* BitTorrent client
* Anti-virus / Virus scanner
* PowerPC based Apple Macintosh and Consoles
* ARM Based Smart Phones / PDAs / and Smart books
* SPARC based workstations and future consoles
* MIPS based Consoles
* x86/x64 based PCs and netbooks / Nettops
* Windows 95/98/Me/XP/Vista/7 software / driver compatibility
* 'nix software / driver compatibility (Linux/Unix)
Technical details
Booting
FreeOS/1 will be able to be booted from a hard drive, live CD, USB flash drive or floppy disk.It can also be run using virtualization software like Virtual PC and VirtualBox or emulation software like Bochs and QEMU. To use the Windows Boot Menu the following line can be added to <code></code>:
C:\FDOSBOOT.BIN="FreeOS/1"
To boot using GRUB something similar to the following can be added to menu.lst:
title FreeOS/1 # Anything you want
root hd(x,y) # x device and y partition on which FreeOS/1 resides
chainloader /kernel.sys # Boots FreeOS/1's bootloader
Memory management
The FreeCOM shell, FreeOS/1's version of COMMAND.COM, can move portions of itself into extended memory freeing up large portions of conventional memory, up to 620 kB. This is useful for DOS programs which only use conventional memory. The HIMEM and EMM386 memory management programs included with FreeOS/1 provide extended memory (XMS) and expanded memory (EMS) for old real mode software, EMM386 also supports VCPI, which allows DPMI kernels and DOS extenders to coexist with it. FreeOS/1 also contains an UDMA driver for faster disk access, which is also compatible with other DOS versions. The LBAcache disk cache stores recently accessed disk data in XMS for faster access and less direct disk access.

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