The FreeDOS Project News

Javier Gutiérrez Chamorro has made a huge update to his Zerofill tool, which fills empty space on a drive with zeroes (helps with virtual machine disk compression). Version 4.10 has huge improvements, including: Rewritten to avoid int64/long long so binary is smaller, Use bigger blocks and bigger file to make process twice as fast, Rewritten as TUI with WCONIO. Download and source code are available from Zerofill on Sourceforge

mTCP is a set of TCP/IP programs for your PC compatible computers running DOS. Mike Brutman recently announced that a new mTCP is available! This version has some bug fixes, adds black and white Sixel graphics to Telnet, makes Ping more accurate, and has major performance improvements for NetDrive. The HTTP server source code is also now included. Download the new from from the mTCP website

Please help us test the next version of FreeDOS! Thanks to Jerome, our distribution manager, we are able to share a new "test" distribution every month. These monthly releases collect all new changes, and act as a "test bed" to become the next official FreeDOS distribution, and we would like your help to test it. The new "T2610" ("T" for test, "26" for 2026, "10" for October) distribution includes updates to VSBHDA, SBEMU, Himem, TinyAsm, Blocek, Lynx, FDNPKG16, plus several new translations. Since August, we've also included an updated kernel and other tools. Download the test release and let us know if you have any problems.

Victoria Crenshaw has been working on FDNPKG16, the package manager that works on 16-bit computers. Victoria writes: "Fixed an insane amount of bugs. (10+) The version control log has all the changes. FDNPKG16 is very stable now." There may be another update coming soon, but needs your help testing this one first. Find it at FDNPKG16 on GitHub or more directly at ver. 0.99.8254f release... read more

Blocek is text editor for DOS with unicode support. It means that unlike other DOS editors you are not limited to your current code page. Laaca recently updated Blocek to version 1.77b, now translated to 26 languages, plus a few bug fixes. Laaca writes: "I also found two or three minor bugs in program and it is corrected now. And I added specific font files for Belarus language and new TBL filters for Ukrainan, Belarus and Maltese/Esperanto." Get the new release from the Blocek website. We've also mirrored this release in the FreeDOS Files Archive at Ibiblio, under /edit/blocek/1.77b.... read more

Laaca's MySysInf is a system-information tool, useful if you want to learn more about your system: "MySysInf is a DOS port of utility NeoFetch known from Linux and other UNIXes." Laaca recently released version 1.21, which fixes a problem when running under Windows 10. Get the updated version at mysysinf.zip (www.laaca.borec.cz) {note: that's a zip file} from Laaca's website.

"Old-style" PCs used a Sound Blaster for sound, but modern computers since about 1997 use a different sound card (called "High Definition Audio"). To play sound with classic DOS apps (like games) you need an emulator. VSBHDA is a Virtual Sound Blaster for High Definition Audio. Japheth recently released VSBHDA version 2.0 with several fixes, including less latency and fewer dropped samples. Get the new version at VSBHDA 2.0 at GitHub.

BASCOMP is a single-pass BASIC compiler for DOS, targetting 8086/8088 and using COM files as output. Matthias Eberle has released version 3: "This major release expands the supported BASIC language while improving parser robustness, runtime safety and QBasic-style source compatibility. Much code has been rewritten and all tool chain executables are now faster and more reliable." You can download the latest release from the BASCOMP website. See the version 3 release for additional notes. Note that "development was assisted by a coding AI" so we are unlikely to include this in FreeDOS.

Please help us test the next version of FreeDOS! Thanks to Jerome, our distribution manager, we are able to share a new "test" distribution every month. These monthly releases collect all new changes, and act as a "test bed" to become the next official FreeDOS distribution, and we would like your help to test it. The new "T2609" ("T" for test, "26" for 2026, "09" for September) distribution includes an update to UPX and several new translations. Since August, we've also included an updated kernel and other tools. Download the test release and let us know if you have any problems.

Mysysinf is a DOS port of the "Neofetch" system information utility from Linux and other Unix-like systems. Laaca has released a new update to Mysysinf: "Fritz kindly sent me files with program messages of utility Mysysinf translated to many other languages: Danish, Esperanto, Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Latvian, Dutch, Norwegian, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Portuguese, Slovakian, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Ukrainan. I repacked the program (the binary is unchanged)." You can download it directly as a zip file from Laaca's website. We also mirrored this version in the FreeDOS Files Archive at ibiblio, under /util/system/mysysinf

Bernd has shared Chksum, a new checksum tool for DOS. Bernd writes: "The following checksum algorithms are supported in this first release: Cryptographic checksum algorithms: - md5 (default) - sha-1, sha-224, sha-256, - sha3-224, sha3-256, sha3-384 and sha3-512. Non-cryptographic checksum algorithms: - bsdsum (16-bit BSD checksum) - fletcher16 (modulo 255), fletcher32 (modulo 65535) - adler32 - crc32 (polynome 0x04C11DB7) and crc32c (polynome 0x1EDC6F41)." Chksum should work on all systems, from an 8088 upwards, and is released under the European Union Public Licence (EUPL) version 1.2. You can download version 1 from Disroot. The source code is a Fossil repository.... read more

Blocek is a text editor for DOS. Unlike other text editors, Blocek works in graphical mode, can work with very large files and can edit texts in Unicode UTF-8 format, which makes it very useful especially for non-English texts. Laaca would like to release a new version by the end of August, and is looking for feedback on a work-in-progress version. "The two main news are monospaced editing mode: 'i' and 'O' have the same width and improvement in the internal keyboard handler which allows you to create layouts with use of Alt+key." Download the new version {zip file} and try it out. "If you are interested, you are encouraged to find bugs and update the translations of the keyboard layout files. Information which text strings have changed since last version you can find in file \translat_2_trans.txt".

Oberon is Niklaus Wirth's successor to Pascal and Modula-2 — a small, strongly-typed systems language. This project implements a practical DOS dialect of Oberon-07: the core language "plus what real 16-bit systems programming needs." Programmers who are interested in experimenting with a programming language that was meant to succeed Pascal, find it at DosWorld's Trubo Oberon at GitHub.

Michael Brutman created an interesting project, a basic packet driver that enables you to use the DaynaPORT SCSI/Link Ethernet device under DOS. These devices were usually used on early Macintosh computers which had SCSI controllers but not much else for expandability. Today these devices are somewhat hard to find but they are emulated by devices like BlueSCSI and ZuluSCSI. If you would like to use the DaynaPORT for networking on FreeDOS, download it at the project on GitHub.

We set up a FreeDOS store on Zazzle in 2011 so folks could buy stickers, tshirts, mugs, ties, and other items with the FreeDOS logo on them. However, maintaining the store is starting to become a hassle, so we're planning to close the Zazzle store a month from now, in August. This is your last chance to buy stickers and tshirts if you want them.

NASM is the Netwide Assembler, an assembler for the x86 CPU architecture. NASM 3.02 was recently released with updates and fixes which should be interesting to assembly programmers. Read more in the change log. Download the new version from release build 3.02 on the NASM website. We've also mirrored the new release in the FreeDOS files archive at Ibiblio, at /devel/asm/nasm

FreeDOS Kernel is the core part of FreeDOS that provides DOS services (program loading, file and device I/O, memory management, and the INT 21h API most DOS software uses). Kernel 2046 is an incremental maintenance release with edge‑case fixes and compatibility updates. Changes in this release include: - bugfix: CD on remote Lantastic mapped drives - bugfix: print to Lantastic redirected printers - misc: port some improvements from FDPP (Stas & Andrew) - bugfix: move control-break handler off stack, fix Invisible Lan redir - bugfix: rework truename so when on mapped drive with invalid CDS properly resolves character devices (i.e. fix copy CON). Thanks to Andrew Bird and Jeremy Davis for these updates to the FreeDOS Kernel! You can find it at FreeDOS Kernel at GitHub or more directly from the FreeDOS Kernel 2046 release tag. We've also mirrored this to the FreeDOS Files Archive at Ibiblio, under files/dos/kernel.

FDNPKG16 is a Network Package Manager for FreeDOS, which runs in 16-bit mode. Victoria has been making updates to the package manager, and recently released a new update. Victoria share these changes: "- cleaned a bunch of code - added basic error levels - fixed a potential bug with an error catcher and lsxflag - fixed the untested open watcom 1.9 compiling with the makefile in DOS." FDNPKG16 is open source, under the MIT license. You can download the new release from FDNPKG16 at GitHub or more directly as a zip file at fdnpkg16·zip. This is also mirrored on Victoria's personal server at fdnpkg16·zip.

It was 32 years ago today (June 29, 1994) that we announced what became the FreeDOS Project. We welcome everyone to contribute by writing code, testing, debugging, documenting, translating, advocating, .. or anything else that helps FreeDOS. Also join the email list: developers hang out on freedos-devel, general questions are on freedos-user.... read more

UPX is a free, secure, portable, extendable, high-performance executable packer for several executable formats, including DOS. UPX will typically reduce the file size of programs by around 50% to 70%, thus reducing disk space. UPX version 5.2.0 was recently released, containing mostly bug fixes. Full details at the UPX website. You can download the DOS version and source code from the 5.2.0 release page on GitHub.

DUGL is a super fast, open source, 32bits/DOS only/ C, Assembly Game library using software rasterizer. DUGL Player is a GUI video/audio player for DOS systems, using DUGL. Version 1.0 Alpha6 was recently released with several improvements, including: - Now use FFMPEG 5.1.8 with pentium-MMX CPU enabled including assembly optimizations - Add support of Aspect Ratio with built-in list that could be overwritten by config file - Add fast video decoding - Add Aspect Ratio widget - Severals other fixes and speed improvement. Find it at the DUGL Player on GitHub, part of the DUGL repository. Or download the alpha 6 player directly as a DPL10A6.zip file (github.com).

FDNPKG16 is a network-aware package manager for FreeDOS. Thanks to Victoria for releasing another update with fixes and new features: * case-less file name comparisons when checking packages for conflicting files on hard disk * you can now press a or 3 to abort the installation of a package with files on disk * updated translations. You can get it from the FDNPKG16 v0.99.8254c release in Victoria's Git instance.

Lynx is a web browser that works in text mode. Lynx version 2.9.3 was released on May 31, and includes several key fixes and updates; see the list of changes for details. However, this version does not have a DOS exe (although the sources contain a DOS makefile). If you'd like to contribute, consider compiling (and sharing) a DOS exe for others to use. You can get the new release from the Lynx website.

X-VESA is a DOS diagnostic program for in-depth analysis and verification of VESA interfaces on real hardware, written entirely in x86 assembly language. Thanks to Marco for sharing this program. See X-VESA on GitHub for more information, including a full list of features and source code. X-VESA is available under the GNU GPL v3.

If you want to play DOS games on modern hardware, another option to emulate SoundBlaster is VSBHDA, the Virtual Sound Blaster for HDA sound cards. Thanks to Japheth for releasing an updated VSBHDA with several fixes, including: fixed regression in v1.8: sound may have been distorted in Open Cubic Player, and contains preliminary hdpmi v3.24. Download the latest release from VSBHDA on GitHub or more directly from version 1.9.