MS-DOS VS linux

Compare MS-DOS vs linux and see what are their differences.

MS-DOS

The original sources of MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0, for reference purposes (by microsoft)

linux

Linux kernel source tree (by torvalds)
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MS-DOS linux
59 981
15,623 170,551
- -
0.0 10.0
over 4 years ago 5 days ago
Assembly C
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later GNU General Public License v3.0 or later
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

MS-DOS

Posts with mentions or reviews of MS-DOS. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-25.
  • MS-DOS v1.25, v2.0, v4.0 Source Code
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Apr 2024
  • Open Sourcing DOS 4
    10 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 25 Apr 2024
    This 4.0 code contains references to 4.00, though: https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/main/v4.0/src/BOOT/...
  • DOS 4.0 Source Code Released Under MIT License
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 25 Apr 2024
  • Why Does Windows Use Backslash as Path Separator?
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Apr 2024
  • ST-DOS
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 28 Mar 2024
    I recently stumbled across the MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0 source code [1].

    [1] https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS

  • The History of Xenix
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 25 Dec 2023
    “Despite this reduction in scope for MS-DOS 2.0, it did carry many bits of XENIX. The system adopted I/O redirection via less-than and greater-than symbols, piping, a hierarchical directory tree, file handles […]”

    The source code for MSDOS 2 is available and the file descriptor stuff appears to be in https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/master/v2.0/source/... and XENIX2.ASM. It stands in contrast to the File Control Block API which MSDOS 1 (née 86-DOS) modeled after CP/M’s API.

  • MS-DOS v1.25 and v2.0 is now open-source (2014)
    1 project | /r/patient_hackernews | 8 Sep 2023
  • MS-DOS v1.25 and v2.0 is now open-source
    1 project | /r/hypeurls | 8 Sep 2023
  • MS-DOS is now open-sourced
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 6 Sep 2023
    Asynchronous I/O figures in prominently in Windows NT. I was really surprised to see[0]:

    Each driver in the chain defines two entry points; the strategy routine and the interrupt routine. The 2.0 DOS does not really make use of two entry points (it simply calls strategy, then immediately calls interrupt). This dual entry point scheme is designed to facilitate future multi-tasking versions of MS-DOS. In multi-tasking environments I/O must be asynchronous, to accomplish this the strategy routine will be called to queue (internally) a request and return quickly. It is then the responsibility of the interrupt routine to perform the actual I/O at interrupt time by picking requests off the internal queue (set up by the strategy routine), and process them. When a request is complete, it is flagged as "done" by the interrupt routine. The DOS periodically scans the list of requests looking for ones flagged as done, and "wakes up" the process waiting for the completion of the request.

    I didn't realize that kind of forwarding-looking perspective was going into the design of MS-DOS.

    [0] https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/master/v2.0/source/...

  • Exploring the Internals of Linux v0.01
    8 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 12 Aug 2023
    >Any others I'm missing?

    I would suggest MS-DOS: https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS

linux

Posts with mentions or reviews of linux. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-30.
  • The File Filesystem
    8 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 30 Apr 2024
    FFS predates FreeBSD and is in some capacity supported by all 3 major BSDs. I'm fairly confident that Linux actually supports it through the ufs driver ( https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/fs/ufs ); whether the use of different names in different places makes it better or worse is an exercise for the reader.
  • Linus Torvalds adds arbitrary tabs to kernel code
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Apr 2024
    These are a bit easier to see what's going on:

    https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/d5cf50dafc9dd5faa1e...

    https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/d5cf50dafc9dd5faa1e61...

    Unfortunately Github doesn't have a way to render symbols for whitespace, but you can tell by selecting the spaces that the previous version had leading tabs. Linus changed it so that the tokens `default` and the number e.g. `12` are also separated by a tab. This is tricky, because the token "default" is seven characters, it will always give this added tab a width of 1 char which makes it always layout the same as if it were a space no matter if you use tab widths of 1, 2, 4, or 8.

  • Show HN: Running TempleOS in user space without virtualization
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 11 Apr 2024
  • PfSense Software Embraces Change: A Strategic Migration to the Linux Kernel
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 4 Apr 2024
    There was also a Gentoo effort to run atop FreeBSD[0]. The challenge of course is that afaik none of the BSD kernel ABIs are considered stable. The stable interface is the BSD libc. That said, with binfmt_misc, I don't see a reason you couldn't just run (at least some) FreeBSD binaries on Linux with a thin syscall translation layer (rather something like qemu-system) and then your layer hooked via binfmt_misc. I'm not aware of anyone who has done this for FreeBSD, but prior efforts existed as alternate binfmts for SysVr4/5 ELF binaries[2]. Either way would take some elbow grease, but you *might* even be able just reuse binfmt_elf and just have a new interpreter for FreeBSD elf.

    [0] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoo_FreeBSD

    [1] https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/binfmt-misc.html

    [2] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/fs/binfmt_elf....

  • Improvements to static analysis in GCC 14
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 3 Apr 2024
    > The original less-than check was deemed incorrect

    It was only deemed incorrect because of an information leak. Not because it's a valid use-case for user space to copy smaller portions of *hwrpb into user space. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/21c5977a836e399fc71...

  • Linus Torvalds accepts a merge commit to the Linux kernel
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Apr 2024
  • TinyMCE (also) moving from MIT to GPL
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 27 Mar 2024
    Correct. And the combined work needs to carry the MIT license text and copyright attributions for the MIT software authors. With binary distribution it must also be overt, not hidden in some source code drop, but directly accompanying the binary.

    Many people who talk about relicensing never credit the MIT developers or distribute the MIT license text. "Because it's GPL now."

    I don't think that you believe that, but many developers do.

    Some don't see the need for source code scans for Open Source compliance, because the license.txt says GPL, so it's GPL. Prime example is the Linux kernel. There is code under different licenses in there, but people don't even read https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/COPYING till the end ("In addition, other licenses may also apply.") and conclude it's simply GPL 2 and nothing else.

    Also be aware that sublicensing is not the same as relicensing.

  • Linus Torvalds is looking for a more modern GUI editor
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 28 Feb 2024
    > Does he have something against it?

    He notoriously hates GNU Emacs, yes.

    https://marc.info/?m=122955159617722

    https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/...

  • The Linux Kernel Prepares for Rust 1.77 Upgrade
    9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 Feb 2024
    So If we would only count code and not comments, it is only 9489 LoC Rust. Which would be about 0.03% and if we take all lines and not only LoC it would be around 0.05%

    [0] https://github.com/XAMPPRocky/tokei

    [1] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/b401b621758e46812da...

  • Proposed Windows NT sync driver brings big Wine/Proton performance improvements
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 25 Jan 2024
    AIUI fsync is built on futex_waitv which has been upstreamed. So this has to be more than that.

    https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/a0eb2da92b715d0c97b...

What are some alternatives?

When comparing MS-DOS and linux you can also consider the following projects:

86Box - Emulator of x86-based machines based on PCem.

zen-kernel - Zen Patched Kernel Sources

dosbox-x - DOSBox-X fork of the DOSBox project

DS4Windows - Like those other ds4tools, but sexier

Chicago95 - A rendition of everyone's favorite 1995 Microsoft operating system for Linux.

winapps - Run Windows apps such as Microsoft Office/Adobe in Linux (Ubuntu/Fedora) and GNOME/KDE as if they were a part of the native OS, including Nautilus integration.

qubes-issues - The Qubes OS Project issue tracker

Open and cheap DIY IP-KVM based on Raspberry Pi - Open and inexpensive DIY IP-KVM based on Raspberry Pi

emu2 - Simple x86 and DOS emulator for the Linux terminal.

serenity - The Serenity Operating System 🐞

open-watcom-v2 - Open Watcom V2.0 - Source code repository, Wiki, Latest Binary build, Archived builds including all installers for download.

DsHidMini - Virtual HID Mini-user-mode-driver for Sony DualShock 3 Controllers