I went to the Pikom PC Fair yesterday and I noticed several brands sold with “FreeDOS”. These brands include Acer, Asus, HP, and (I’m told) Dell. None of the sellers seem to know what FreeDOS is, and when asked about it most of them offer to install an unlicensed (illegal) copy of Windows 7 for free with the purchase of the computer.

This is a follow-up guest post by software and system engineer, and former maintainer of freeDOS, about Free and OpenSource software. Here, James talks about the pragmatics of running an OpenSource software project, based on his experience with freeDOS.

This last Christmas, I refurbished and installed computers for two of my children. As we still have a pile of old games in a drawer, I wanted to provide multi-boot systems. This was much easier and more satisfying than the last time I set up a Linux/Windows dual boot system (with LOADLIN.EXE, which I can't really recommend today).

The easiest way to create a bootable USB drive on Linux or Windows is to use UNetbootin. Follow this simple howto to create a bootable FreeDOS flash drive.

James Hall is a very experienced software and system engineer who is probably best known for creating and maintaining the freeDOS project for several years. James is eminently qualified to provide an oriention to FOSS and to discuss its sometimes obvious and sometimes rather nuanced significance.

James Hall, of freeDOS fame, talks about how to run and maintain an open source project.

This is the third of four guest posts by software and system engineer, and former maintainer of freeDOS, James Hall.

Who's left standing at the altar?

After more than 6 years of development, the OpenTTD developers have released version 1.0 of their open source Transport Tycoon Deluxe clone, adding a number of improvements on the original to the urban planning and simulation game