XFDOS

XFDOS graphical FreeDOS distribution

This distribution consists of a graphical desktop called SLWM combined with the FLTK based applications I ported to DOS plus other DOS applications.

Here is a screenshot of the desktop:

I ported XFDOS to Linux and called it Nanolinux. Here are links to Nanolinux:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/nanolinux/

and on the Distrowatch site:

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=nanolinux

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: juanpedr...@gmail.com

This is a beautiful gui for DOS, and you did an amazing job with USB, FLTK, etc, thanks!

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: dos...@gmail.com

Thank you very much for the comment! I hope a number of people will use it to make it worthwhile to bring out further versions.

Georg

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: angro...@gmail.com

I've already seen attempts to build a GUI for dos 32 (ikongui, seal) but none of them featured a working word processor and spreadsheed. Keep on this good work!

I hope you will soon be able to add multitasking to it (ca be done? Maybe with dlx or similar...)

Oh, can the library be used in freebasic, too?

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: dos...@gmail.com

You can add FreeBasic? programs to the desktop easily: just make a new dop file (similar to PIF on Windows). Copy one of the existing dop files and edit that for your program.

Multitasking: to do that properly you would need to make a VM Monitor like Windows XP does. Quite a task, there is TRIDOS but that does not work perfectly.

DLX: the applications are mainly ported from Linux to DOS so it would be easier to make a DLX distribution combined with SLWM, the desktop of XFDOS, than running multiple DOSBOXes on DLX.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: angro...@gmail.com

About FreeBasic?: my question was not about running a Freebasic program in your environment, but about using the library in freebasic (so, I'd be able to create GUI applications in FreeBasic?)

About DLX: in fact, my idea was to use DLX (or dxe3gen ) to compile programs as dynamically linked modules: so, you'd be able to run them without leaving your desktop, and, in theory, you could run more than one program at the same time (both SEAL and ikongui used that approach)

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: dos...@gmail.com

With FreeBasic? you could use Nano-X which is a small X11 library. However, FLTK is most helpful for developing applications and that needs C++. It can only be used properly if you can subclass and inherit. FreeBasic? to my knowledge cannot call C++ libraries.

There is currently a discussion on comp.os.msdos.djgpp about problems with DXE so I did not try that. Multitasking in my opinion should take care of concurrent access to disk(files), mouse, keyboard, network etc.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: stevenl...@gmail.com

Can you launch regular dos programs from the desktop? In other words, can you create icons to launch like fast tracker II and warcraft for dos, so they load, and when you exit, go back to the desktop?

Great work! Will try this!

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: jerrygo...@gmail.com

Nice i like this apps bro!

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: dos...@gmail.com

Hi Steven,

yes, you can(and should) do that. You should install the hard disk version for that so your modifications will not be lost. You have to make a new DOP file for each new application with your favorite editor or the editor provided with XFDOS. The DOP file defines the command line to run the new application and what ICON you want to use - if you do not want to see the default icon. You can move the icons around on the screen and XFDOS will store the locations when you exit it.

This can be any DOS program, command line or graphical program.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: c08...@gmail.com

This looks great, but i'm having problems... Both my mouse and keyboard are usb. USB keyboard works fine under FreeDOS, but not the USB mouse... So it doesn't work either in XFDOS. FDOS detects the mouse but it doesn't work as it should, no matter in what direction i move the mouse, the arrow is always moving to the right side...

I have no "Legacy USB Support" option in my Phoenix Bios. What can i do? (Apart from buying a PS/2 Mouse).

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: dos...@gmail.com

Yes, you need legacy support or a PS/2 mouse. The DOS mouse driver needs to find a mouse or it will not work.

Sometimes there are separate settings for legacy support for keybord and for mouse in the BIOS. I really have not yet found a BIOS which would not support a mouse via legacy support.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: SergejBy...@gmail.com

This is interesting, but there is no system requirements anywhere. Neither are feature description. What do I need to run this from HDD and what - from CD? Can I browse web with Dillo on dial-up connection? Are too new and too old PCs able to run this? For example, I want to try this boot CD on Pentium 133 with 16 Mb RAM and COM mouse. Can I? Will I be able to play DOS games with it? Does it supports my sound card (old yamaha sound board). On the other hand, my main PC is Core 2 duo ASUS P5K with 4 GB RAM, with NTFS-formatted HDD. Can I access and manage my files from your boot CD? What tool does it use for file management?

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: agustin...@gmail.com

buena apariencia, no toma teclado usb ni ps2, no toma raton serial, usb ni ps2, alguna solucion?

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: csvander...@gmail.com

I am suprised to see such a beautiful desktop in FreeDOS Is this better than opengem and wil it be eventually a part of FreeDOS Are you still working to deal with the last problems mentioned in the other mails? Catharinus van der Werf

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: dos...@gmail.com

I did not hear from anybody yet that XFDOS shall become a part of FreeDOS. It is free and I would not object that it becomes a part of FreeDOS.

I did not check this page for a while so I did not respond to the above emails. I read in the FreeDOS forum that there is a problem with wattcp saving the ip-address it gets in a file and when reusing it the server does not accept it any more. Did not find time to look into that yet.

Regarding the post above by Sergej, this are quite a lot of questions. I test XFDOS on fairly new PCs since you need some horsepower to have it run smoothly. As far as I can tell it will work on very old PCs also but maybe too slow to make you happy using it. But you have to try. XFDOS when installed on the HDD works just like any other DOS application. It unloads when an icon is clicked and is loaded again after the selected application has terminated. You can terminate manually and continue on the command line and load XFDOS/SLWM any time later again if you like. And you can just delete it if you want to uninstall it.

I just included paket drivers for network cards. For dial-up you will have to install a suitable packet driver yourself. But then it should run.

Since XFDOS/SLWM unloads from memory before running a selected application, you can run any application just as if you would load it from the command line. XFDOS dos not make use of a sound card but the included application MPXPlay will. The CD comes with an NTFS driver which you can load to access the files on an NTFS HDD after booting from the CD. Since this driver is old it may have problems with the newest NTFS format. So I would just use it to read files but not to write files to an NTFS disk. When I start my PC the CD will detect the FAT partitions on my HDD and I can work fine with these. File management: I have not included any "commander" application with two panels. But you can click on the "Open File" icon and select and run any file just as you would in Windows explorer. Cut and paste these files is not done yet.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: neflyt...@gmail.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8ySrta6Jlk

I made this demo video.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: dos...@gmail.com

Hi Ernesto,

thank you for making this video! I really appreciate that you are taking this interest in XFDOS.

It seems to me that so many people are interested in XFDOS that I will see that I make a new version when my time permits.

Georg

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: ricardo....@gmail.com

Hello.

I have installed MSDOS6 and XFDOS in an old laptop that I happen to still have around. The system in case is a Toshiba Sattelite 220cs which specs are Pentium 1 133mhz (non mmx) with 64 mbs ram, and I belive a 2 mbs graphics card. Sound is a Yamaha OPL3. I decided to give you some feedback on how your system (XFDOS) runs on a real machine, with low specs. I expect to help improving this system in order for me to have it as the main OS in this old laptop. I of course have a modern computer to use, but still want to have this one running.

So, let's see, I am rigt now booting the MSDOS (I have installed usb and mouse drivers as well as yamaha sound drivers for dos) and will then boot XFDOS. My main drive is C: and all the folders of XFDOS are there as well.

After using appstart command, it takes only a few seconds to get to the desktop. That is nice. Let's now try some of the apps.

Spreadsheet: I click it, the desktop disapears for a few seconds, shows something about a dpmi file, and then comes back. I was never able to load the Spreadsheet application. So, that's a bad bug that needs to be fixed.

FLWriter: I click it, it takes a few seconds, I would say about 5, and loads the app. After using it for some minutes trying different options, I have this to say: -Sometimes when clicking a button on the toolbar (bold option for example) the focus does not go automaticaly back to the text, so I have to click in the text window to keep writing. It's not really a serious bug, but it's annoying anyway. And maybe it is something easy to fix. -Virtual keyboard works nicely. -Automatic alignment works nicely too. -Adding images is possible but the preview option is not working (at least the images I tried with would always show the "?" mark and not the image.) It also lacks some easier way to walk aroud the files. Still it works. -Pressing escape key will turn off the app and get me back to the desktop... WITHOUT asking me to save my work. That should be addressed, a minor mistake coud compromise an entire day of work. -When I try to export my work to PDF file, I run into multiple problems, not only it deletes the text after trying to save it, but it also won't allow me to change the directory after the first time I try to save it. That means that when I try to save the PDF file to c: if it doesn't for some reason, all attemps after that will always save it to the same destination (giving the same errors time and time again). So, it works, but some main functions should be debugged I think. For a DOS application, I will have to say that it's the most powerfull text/document editor I have ever seen, and one that makes it reasonable to use DOS as a operating system at the office. But these issues I mentioned need to be addressed in order for it to be reliable.

Mupdf: When I try to load it, the desktop disapears, I get a message saying I need to get a certain zip file, and the desktop comes back. Just like spreadsheet, I have always had that problem, never being able to open Mupdf.

OpenFile?: It's a little bit primitive, but it is usable. HOWEVER, when I double click a mp3 file it closes the OpenFile? window, but remains in the desktop, instead of launching the audio player. I have also double clicked the spreadsheet.dop file, and it opened the editor with the informations within that dop file. This was nicer, as it allows me to edit the dop files in a more direct way. So, it's a little bit primitive like I said, but it works. Just needs to have filetypes associated with the desktop applications. (like mp3 for example, should open with Mpxplayer).

MpxPlayer?: Odd behavior. When I click it, it loads, and the application starts, but it stays for a long time searching through all the files in the system, before it stops and allows me to use it! What the HE double hokey sticks??? Well, I guess I can wait a minute before listening to my music.... Well, now I am able to use it. The mouse works, which is very important in a program like this. However, I can't figure out how to access the d: drive. Any hints?? Also, files do play (mp3, ogg, etc) but the sound is nowhere to be found! =S it might have something to do with the drivers, but I have just installed the drivers from yamaha! Hum... wonder if it's a problem with XFDOS, MpxPlayer?, or MSDOS. So... I can't really tell if it works or not. For me it doesn't.

FLView: Well, it's the most barebons app in XFDOS, that's for sure. A few more options would be nice, like navigation between images. Also, it crashes if you click the "zoom" buttons without having a image loaded. That's what I just had right now :P

AntiPaint?: Just like spreadsheet and Mupdf, i click it and it won't open. Seriously, am I doing something wrong here? I have all folders in c: drive, and the files are there too.... Sometimes the desktop goes blank and returns, sometimes I get an error talking about a zip file or a dmpi file, but I can't open half the apps in this desktop!

Dillo: It loads, and apparently works. But since i have no internet connection in this computer, I can't really say if it is ok or not. It seems to have a few nice options (like being able to change the default search engine) but I also notice that it disrespects the size of the monitor (it is probably playing at HD resolution in Dillo, which is too large for the monitor). Is it a bug? Everthing else was in the correct res (800x600).

Oh wait, now that I came back to the desktop from Dillo, the entire desktop went gigantic... I can't access the menu anymore -.-

Guess I will stop here. I have to be honest I was rellay hyped about this GUI/OS. And I still am, I can see that it has a lot of potential with it's own apps, and if I was to use other DOS apps it woud certainly do a lot of good work. I hope you will continue to work on this project, and I will try to keep providing feedback to help you. However, as of now, it has too many bugs happening to function as a main OS in a main PC. Which is sad, because i belive it has the potential for that. So, I hope this was a help somehow, I encourage you to keep working on it (fix those bugs!) and I belive it has the potential to become the main DOS distribution outthere! Really, with writer, spreadsheet, music, pdf, etc, it has everything that is needed. Once these bugs are corrected I will stick with this as my main OS in this old laptop! But I was a little bit sad I couldn't stick to it right now :)

Also, I would like to suggest that you keep the hardware requirements low. I know that you are trying to make a modern OS out of DOS, and so old computers are not the main priority, but please consider this, the people with a Pentium2 or 3 are already using Linux distros that are much more mature and flexible than DOS. Who comes looking for a DOS distro? Peopl who have a computer where they used to run DOS and want to keep it running with a more modern GUI. So, in order for it to be useful and more relevant in todays world, it should run on the computers that used to run dos back in the day. Of course, my machine is a way too low end machine, but still XFDOS should be usable (even if the recommended specs become a pentium2). So, yeah, that's my suggestion, keep the resources low (other GUIs do it, so it must be possible :P)

Well, congratulations on such an achievement and I was really happy with everything that is done so far, I hope you will fix those bugs I mentioned soon, and keep working on it =)

Keep up the good work man! =)

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: dos...@gmail.com

I am sorry for this result. I do test it on my development PC which is an AMD quad-core with 2300 MHz.

Each application loads an instance of the cwsdpmi server which needs to open a swap file on disk. I guess that is where your problems result from. You could load cwsdpmi first and make it resident with a command line switch. This may help in your case. If cwsdpmi does not load you know why the applications do not load. Sometimes I did observe that DOS shows the message "abort,ignore,continue" or similar after clicking on an icon. If you select ignore or continue it will run fine.

I will test the next version on my oldest PC as well. In general it should not stop working on a slow PC just maybe too slow to be fun to use.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: ricardo....@gmail.com

Hello again.

Hey, don't be sorry, I was not trying to put you down or disrespect your work in any way. I like XFDOS very much, and I believe in it's potential, that's why I want to help by running tests and providing feedback. I only mention bugs so you can correct them, but I know it takes a lot of work to do something like this and I appreciate that you do it ;)

So, I have some news. I decided to fdisk the entire thing (mbr and partition) and install freedos 1.1. On top of that (after adding usbaspi and di1000dd, because that was the only way to get my usb to be recognized) I installed XFDOS. I will now test it again, and I believe that by having freedos 1.1 as the OS (instead of old msdos) it will run a lot better.

First, I would like to ask you a question. In freedos boot, it has some options:

1 - Load FreeDOS with JEMMEX, no EMS (most UMBs), max RAM free 2 - Load FreeDOS with EMM386 (expanded memory) and SHARE loaded 3 - Load FreeDOS including XMGR XMS-memory driver 4 - Load FreeDOS without drivers

I can boot using any of them (already tested) but I am unsure which provides with the best performance. Which one would you suggest to improve XFDOS response? I don't mind if the system is a little bit more energy consuming, I want the best performance. Any suggestions?

Well, I am going to test option 3 now.

Ok, so I entered XFDOS desktop, it takes a few seconds. I believe this could be improved if I could get FreeDOS not to stop the disks (I believe FreeDOS is trying to save energy, but it makes disk access slower every time I want to access the disk, it loses 1 or 2 seconds waking up the disk... any ideas here??).

So, two things I notice right away, using the desktop:

1. I can't exit the XFDOS desktop -.- I press escape and it reloads the desktop! How am i supposed to get back to command prompt??? This should be addressed, locking people inside your GUI is not a nice way to get more users :P eheheh 2. If I ckick on start button, and put the mouse over settings it opens the new menu. BUT if i click in "settings", it actually crashes XFDOS, sending me back to the command prompt! There must be a small mistake on the way the menu is dealt with. I am using this bug to "solve" problem1 (not being able to exit XFDOS) but having one bug as the solution of the other is not good publicity :P eheheh

So, let's try applications!

Spreadsheet: It loads! yeih! We are getting somewhere now! At least I can open it. A problem here is that it opens in a gigantic size, disrespecting the resolution I select. Desktop is fine (800x600) but in some applications resolution is actually messed up. Usually it will try to use the larger resolution supported (which unfortunatly puts the window outside my screen). Maybe you can force apps to respect resolution of the desktop? So I click a cell and I am able to write a few digits there and hit enter and.... it crashes, sending me back to the desktop. Hum.... I will try again, but I am not very confident...... I am able to write text (I could write "freedos is my friend") but as soon as I try to use numbers, it crashes. Hum... guess no spreadsheet for me =/

OpenFile?: Simply, it won't work anymore. I used to be able to use it in msdos, but now it just crashes the desktop when I click it, sending me back to command prompt. Do you think this is related to the "delay" accessing the disk (maybe the app was expecting the disk to be readily available and it is not, so it crashes??)?. Well, anyway, I can't use it, so I can't file browse. Hum... this is a major setback! =( Do you think it's fixable? If I am doing something wrong (or if its a issue with freedos) please explain it to me and I will correct it right away =)

Mupdf: hum... It opens, but again disrespects the resolution and I can't figure out how to access pdf files on my hard drive. Hum... I can't use it because I don't see how =S

FLcalc: I click it, it fails to load. Gets me back to the desktop. =S

Mpxplay: Well, I want to first say one important thing: I WAS ABLE TO SOLVE THE SOUND PROBLEM! ;) yeih! it was really easy! To get sound on yamaha opl3 under dos (freedos in this case) I just had to go to the BIOS and set "wss(rec) & SBPro DMA" to "Same as play". It was a magic solution, I now have sound playing in Mpxplay. Haven't tried with other applications. But I am happy until now =) So, having said this, Mpxplay seems to be working faster though it still makes the same search routine in startup. But it does give me sound and works nicely. I am able to browse even if it is not very intuitive. Maybe one day (not a priority or anything) you could develop a GUI for Mpxplay? To use it with XFDOS. But as I said, it's more important now to solve the bugs :P eheh. Mpxplay works! ;)

Well, I have to go now, I will give you more feedback ASAP. So, as it stands, I can't really recomend to have XFDOS/FreeDOS as the main GUI/OS, but I still think it has a lot of potential (if the apps stop crashing so much, we will probably have here a power user gui, capable of being run on a office computer. which is amazing ;D)

As always, thanks for everything, any test you need me to run just say so and keep up the good work! =)

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: ricardo....@gmail.com

How do I try to do that? How do I load that thing (lol)? I suppose it is part of xfdos?? Also, I was looking around here, and noticed you have some other programs that are not a part of XFDOS... like the email cliente (which seems to have encryption, so I suppose it is more secure than dillo). Why did you left it out? :P Anyway, as usual, keep up the good work man! ;)

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: dos...@gmail.com

Please do not use Jemmex. Although I believe it is very good software I had a report that my software only works if Jemmex is not loaded. EMS is not needed, just XMS.

I started writing FlMail after I released XFDOS. The next release of XFDOS will contain FlMail. The latest release of Dillo for DOS now also supports SSL.

Georg

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: dos...@gmail.com

The ESC key is the "last resort" and terminates XFDOS immediately. As XFDOS is set up now it will automatically reload in that case. You can properly exit XFDOS by selecting "EXIT" from the popup menu after clicking on the START button. Then you can reload it if you want to - see the README.

Georg

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: ricardo....@gmail.com

hey, thanks for the replies =) I will follow your advice and try other boot options then.

Yeah, I thought it would be a matter of time for FLMail to become part of XFDOS. However, I thought that Dillo had limited support for https... IIRC it had only encryption and not authentication (making MITM attacks possible)... Could you please confirm this? That was one of the reasons I "disliked" arachne, even though it could almost become a GUI all by itself it actually lacked as a web browser.

DAMN! I gotta be getting blind sooner than expected, how could I not see the "exit" option? -.- Bad bad me.... lol. Sorry :P

Still, do you have any ideas why those other bugs happen? Resolutions and crashes, are they normal bugs that will be corrected over time, or is it me doing something wrong?

Well, anyway, thanks for the replies, and keep up the good work man, I really hope this project moves forward =) Any tests you need done just say so ;)

See ya later!

P.S.: I might be having another blindness attack, but I can't see any menu to change the green in "start" or to change the wallpaper... Any tips? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: dos...@gmail.com

Yes, Dillo does not check certificates. I did not want to implement a "this site is not trusted" dialog. Most of the time this is caused by self-signed certificates and no real problem for the sites I connect. But if you are expecting MITM attacks, you should not use Dillo.

If you select "loading without drivers" when booting FreeDOS I think many problems will disappear. XMS is just needed for the CD version to install an xmsdisk.

You cannot change the color of the start button. The wallpaper is the file "wallimg.png" in the "desktop" directory. If you put a different image file with that name into this directory you get a different wallpaper.

Georg