Very long-time Slashdot reader Jim Hall — part of GNOME’s board of directors — has a Christmas gift. Since 1994 he’s been overseeing an open source project that maintains a replacement for the MS-DOS operating system, and has just announced the release of the “updated, more modern” FreeDOS 1.2! [Y]ou’ll find a few nice surprises. FreeDOS 1.2 now makes it easier to connect to a network. And you can find more tools and games, and a few graphical desktop options including OpenGEM. But the first thing you’ll probably notice is the all-new new installer that makes it much easier to install FreeDOS. And after you install FreeDOS, try the FDIMPLES program to install new programs or to remove any you don’t want. Official announcement also available at the FreeDOS Project blog. FreeDOS also lets you play classic DOS games like Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem, and Jill of the Jungle — and today marks a very special occasion, since it’s been almost five years since the release of FreeDos 1.1. “If you’ve followed FreeDOS, you know that we don’t have a very fast release cycle, ” Jim writes on his blog. “We just don’t need to; DOS isn’t exactly a moving target anymore…” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
