On Mon, May 16, 2022 at 10:09 AM Liam Proven <lpro...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I thought that this blog post might interest folks here. > > https://blog.tmm.cx/2022/05/15/the-very-weird-hewlett-packard-freedos-option/ > > Various models of HP computer can be bought with FreeDOS as their > operating system, and it is the cheapest option -- or Ubuntu Linux for > some models. > > But it's not just a computer with a formatted hard disk and FreeDOS on > it. It's considerably more complicated than that... >
Summary for those who don't want to click on the article: HP is selling new laptops, like the HP Zbook Fury 17.8 G8, with FreeDOS pre-installed. But it's UEFI only (no BIOS) and any DOS requires a BIOS. Here's how HP pre-installed FreeDOS on this system: (quoted from article) > 1 The laptops is set to UEFI boot, which boots a pretty standard GRUB > 2 Debian gets booted with KMS disabled, as well as all DRM drivers. > 3 Once the system is booted Gnome Display Manager starts > 4 GDM will automatically login the root user and start the /root/.xsession > 5 The XSession will start an XFCE terminal and executes Qemu on an image > file in /home/aos/qemu So basically, HP has installed Linux, which starts QEMU, and they boot FreeDOS inside QEMU. When you shut down FreeDOS (exit QEMU) the system shuts down too. *I'll note that I don't see the same pre-installed OS options when I click on the "HP Zbook Fury 17.8 G8" in the article. I only see "Windows 11 Pro," "Windows 10 Pro," "Windows 11 Home," and "Ubuntu Linux 20.04." So either HP has changed it, or the "FreeDOS" option is not available in the US (the article's screenshots show purchase prices in Euro). Jim _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
