Disk Operating System

See also: Operating Systems

Acronym: Disk Operating System

The term used to describe Microsoft‘s “MS-DOS” and variations thereof. A command-line interface program, DOS is largely obselete now as few programs are created for DOS any longer. Still, a variety of programs, many of them free and still useful, are available.

DOS Variants

• MS-DOS
• DR-DOS
• PC-DOS (IBM)
• FreeDOS
• PTS-DOS
• ROM-DOS

DOS Emulators

• DOSBox – Complete emulation for various platforms.
• DOSEMU – Linux only. Requires one of the above variants installed.

Several “operating systems” require an underlying DOS layer, such as the 16 bit Windows variants (3.0, 3.1 etc), some 32 bit Windows variants (95, 98, ME) and Desqview.

See also Archives for some websites featuring DOS software.

• The unusual history of MS-DOS – includes some excellent linkage.
• The history of DOS
• DOS history
• History of MS-DOS
• MS-DOS History

Related Topics

• 4DOS – command.com replacement
• 4NT – proprietary, commercial cmd.exe replacement with tab completion and various other useful features.
• Open Directory Project – DOS

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