Guest post: Favorite OS

Sparky4 has been using FreeDOS for ten years, and shares this story about getting started and installing FreeDOS on a variety of hardware:

Here is my take on FreeDOS. I discovered FreeDOS in mid- to late-2007 when I got a computer technician "Starter Pack." It was a broken Gateway 2000 PC from 1997, with an Intel 80686 Pentium-II CPU, a Knoppix Linux CD, and a FreeDOS 1.0 "Full" CD. FreeDOS 1.0 was latest release.

I installed FreeDOS on my main computer, but I did not know enough at the time to boot into FreeDOS. Over time, I started using it more on a Packard Bell computer, which I got for free. I used MS-DOS too, but I grew to love FreeDOS much more than MS-DOS.

Today, I still use FreeDOS. In fact, I wrote this article using FreeDOS, with FreeDOS Edit 0.9a. I know this editor is bulky on the XT, but it runs fine here.

I use this cute and awesome operating system on all of my computers. Even my newest computer has it, although I wish it had a FreeDOS-compatible network card and sound card. I happen to own an original IBM PC XT Model 5160 and a ‘286 computer generic PC clone. They both run FreeDOS.

They are also extremely fancy, with VGA graphics, Sound Blaster, massive hard drives (readable with an XT-IDE universal BIOS), and networking. I got this for a reason … That reason being Higanbana Project code-named Project 16. It is a new game for these computers. This game would require the VGA and OPL2 for maximum "radness" so I'm testing the game on those computers.

-sparky4