DOS.mdwn (986B)
1 **Disk Operating System** (**DOS**) is the name of many [[operating system]]s 2 starting from 1960s mainframe OSes, but most commonly it refers to 3 Microsoft's MS-DOS and compatible systems running on [[IBM PC]] compatible 4 hardware. [[FreeDOS]] is an actively maintained DOS-compatible operating 5 system that supports things like USB memory sticks. DOSBox is a popular 6 emulator for running DOS-based IBM PC programs in modern operating systems. 7 8 DOS is designed to only run one program at a time with minimal external 9 dependencies. It is thus quite immune to many problems of more modern OSes, 10 such as [[software rot]]. It may well be used as a [[bedrock platform]] or as a 11 "bare-bones" system that may work for basic tasks even when everything else 12 fails. The main compatibility issue in DOS is that a lot of hardware is 13 commonly used by "banging the bare metal", which makes e.g. old sound 14 applications incompatible with modern hardware. 15 16 See also: 17 18 * [[CP/M|CP-M]] 19 * [[Collapse OS]]