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0 pointslivrem1y ago0 comments

This killed FreeDOS (and presumably all the other *DOS as well) on modern hardware unfortunately. It was fun as long as it lasted. I do not know what the next-best single-user, single-process, non-bloated OS would be to run on modern hardware that still has some reasonably modern software and can be used for distraction-free (hobby) development the way FreeDOS could.

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jasaldivara1y ago

> I do not know what the next-best single-user, single-process, non-bloated OS would be to run on modern hardware that still has some reasonably modern software and can be used for distraction-free (hobby) development the way FreeDOS could.

Not sure why would you want a single-process OS on modern hardware, but there are some alternatives that run much less things on the background than regular Linux: Haiku, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, or some lightweight non-glibc, non-systemd Linux-based like Adelie or Alpine.

nineteen9991y ago

Or, you know, just booting the Linux kernel with init=/bin/sh with /bin/sh being a statically linked binary. You're overthinking things.

rwmj1y ago

What's the reason why FreeDOS can't use the CSM (the BIOS compatibility mode of UEFI)?

EvanAnderson1y ago

AFAIK it can. I believe some UEFI implementations don't have CSM.

p_l1y ago

a Type 3 UEFI implementation has no CSM, Type 2 has CSM available, Type 1 enforces booting into CSM (what many "BIOS"es actually was in later days)

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cl911y ago

> the next-best single-user, single-process, non-bloated OS

is UEFI.

trueismywork1y ago

Linux in single user mode

mschuster911y ago

That's still multi-process though, there's an awful lot of background tasks running in pretty much every non-fossil kernel version, not to mention userspace daemons (udev, dbus, dhcp) without which most normal userspace stuff doesn't even work.

Brian_K_White1y ago

None of that exists in single user. When you say init=/bin/foo, then that's it, the only process is /bin/foo.

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