[HN Gopher] The weird Hewlett Packard FreeDOS option ___________________________________________________________________ The weird Hewlett Packard FreeDOS option Author : erik Score : 153 points Date : 2022-05-15 18:45 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (blog.tmm.cx) (TXT) w3m dump (blog.tmm.cx) | NelsonMinar wrote: | Imagine being the engineer tasked with creating this bizarro | system. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | What gets me is... what's the _point_? If you don 't want to | fight MS about selling PCs with no OS, ship some Linux distro. | DOS was a nice option when you needed to support bare-metal stuff | like flashing the BIOS without a modern OS getting in the way, | but I would be _shocked_ if that worked here - basically, I can | see reasons to ship DOS, but they 're all mutually incompatible | with a virtual machine. And if you're going to ship a Linux | distro - heck _even_ if you 're going to include some weird DOS | VM - why would you _ever_ ship multiple different versions? | | So yeah, I'm thinking horribly broken company process and/or | outsourcing without actually making sure the requirements make | sense. | zozbot234 wrote: | > If you don't want to fight MS about selling PCs with no OS, | ship some Linux distro. | | And that's exactly what they're doing. They just did the bare | minimum work to be able to fit that Linux setup under their | pre-existing "FreeDOS" SKU. And the real point of that SKU is | for sophisticated users to wipe the whole thing clean and set | up their own OS install. It still works perfectly for that. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Shipping your PC with "some linux distro" means you have to | support that linux distro. | | Selling it with freedos, you only have to support freedos, and | people who buy that option will install something else anyway. | Spooky23 wrote: | They've been doing it for 20 years, so I'd guess that there is | some sort of contractural rationale between HP and Microsoft. | | HP ships Ubuntu in thin clients by default. So the fact they | are doing this implies some specific reason. | mc4ndr3 wrote: | Ghastly. | Maursault wrote: | Kind of random, but the article reminded me. I think every pdf | should have it's own linux installation. They should role it | into the pdf specification. You never know when that might be | useful. | userbinator wrote: | I know you're half-joking but there's actually been a few | "bootable PDF" articles on HN before. | jchw wrote: | And then there's another OS: UEFI. | | Something I recently joked about doing was porting SDL to the | UEFI environment and then building DOSBOX for it. I'm sure | someone has already done this in some fashion, but the idea was | amusing enough for me to genuinely consider it one of these | weekends. I guess in _that_ case, though, you can't really run | FreeDOS. | [deleted] | Wowfunhappy wrote: | Possibly relevant: an NES emulator for UEFI: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Juc1LT7Xls | bayindirh wrote: | Also, don't forget the Minix running inside a small embedded | processor inside your processor or platform controller. | [deleted] | timClicks wrote: | I occasionally wonder what an operating system running below | ring 0 would be used for. I haven't thought of anything | compelling, apart from being a backdoor. | teruakohatu wrote: | I am sure they will soon find a way to add a hypervisor to | Minix so they can add yet another layer to the mix. | bayindirh wrote: | That'd be fun. Intel would be providing services to | customers for running their own spy platform on any | supported Intel processor. | | Not unlike "Other OS" on PS3. Same theory, different | application. | ndiddy wrote: | I'm guessing they're doing this because modern x86 processors | can't boot into BIOS mode anymore (edit: untrue, see reply by | dmitrygr). This makes me wonder why they're even offering FreeDOS | as an option when they offer Linux for customers who don't wish | to purchase a Windows license. Maybe they have some sort of | contractual obligation with a large customer? | dmitrygr wrote: | > modern x86 processors can't boot into BIOS mode anymore | | This is false. They still can and happily will. Issue is more | about vendor not shipping a CSM image. A modern x86 processor | will happily run real DOS just fine. | yuhong wrote: | toast0 wrote: | Intel's been threatening to cut off everything non UEFI for a | while... I think I read the iGPU in Alder Lake doesn't work | unless you're running UEFI? | | It might not have happened yet, but it seems inevitable. | userbinator wrote: | That's probably because it doesn't have a traditional | VBIOS. | | ...which makes me wonder whether it's possible for the | community to write one, given how much docs and source code | Intel have released for their GPUs. Of course, how VGA- | compatible it is is another thing to consider. | ndiddy wrote: | Thank you for the correction! I saw multiple news articles | several years ago saying that Intel would be dropping support | for BIOS mode by the end of 2020, but it appears they've been | dragging their feet. In the meantime, they seem to have been | making moves in other ways, such as not supporting BIOS mode | when booting with integrated graphics on 11th gen processors | ( https://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1045467 ). | zitterbewegung wrote: | Hypothetically if you wanted to use something like FreeBSD, | Dragonfly BSD or maybe OpenSolaris? This is a big reach. | Spooky23 wrote: | The big market for this is K-12 schools. | | Microsoft has a licensing program for .edu that doesn't require | an "embedded" hardware license. There are also many places | using Neverware to provide Chrome desktops while using the some | warranty services, etc that they have with PCs. | | If you buy alot of computers, you can get desktops crazy cheap. | Big enterprise buyers get low-spec desktops for ~$225 without | windows or $300 with. If you don't care about power/footprint, | they are the best value thin client. Schools are _huge_ PC | buyers, some districts have >300k students, so you're easily | talking 40-70k PCs annually. | mcculley wrote: | Maybe it is for customers running weird old legacy hardware | (e.g., lab devices, manufacturing, that only runs on DOS). | wmf wrote: | Would those apps work inside QEMU though? Is it configured to | properly pass through the parallel port? | walrus01 wrote: | Highly unlikely, without really messing around with it. | mcculley wrote: | Maybe, but wouldn't the customer have to know how to run | QEMU? I am imagining a customer who wants to just replace | an old machine while changing as little as possible. | djur wrote: | Since this install is based on QEMU running in Linux, it | would not meet that need. | mcculley wrote: | The end user need not know it is QEMU atop Linux. They | see and use DOS. | ndiddy wrote: | Weird old legacy hardware that only runs on DOS generally | requires real-time access to stuff like ISA cards or | parallel/serial ports, so this wouldn't work for that use | case since the computer doesn't have any of those. | mcculley wrote: | I have a weird old nylon cutting machine connected to a DOS | machine over a serial port. It would not work with a | USB/RS-232 adaptor? | zozbot234 wrote: | USB-serial conversion would add a measurable amount of | latency, and the access to USB hardware would occur under | a non-real-time OS. Whether the setup "works" would be | highly hardware-specific. There are modern industrial | "PC" boards that are essentially a i586 implementation in | a SoC and can run these workloads far more reliably, | while consuming a lot less power compared to old x86 | hardware. (They're also of interest to retrocomputing | enthusiasts, for largely the same reasons.) | [deleted] | mc4ndr3 wrote: | FreeDOS is known to not run well inside of virtualization. A | proper host install would be far more capable. | mcculley wrote: | But a proper host install is not possible on modern | hardware. | joshcryer wrote: | I suspect it's more bland than that, they need to be able to | have a booting/working system otherwise the customer is going | to call up support and say their computer isn't booting or that | it's saying "no OS found" type messages. It's just to cover | themselves, that's why they include enough Linux to be able to | load a PDF reader. It should be easy enough to do d:\setup.exe | with a USB that has a Windows installer on it, with this setup. | walrus01 wrote: | Yeah, but why not have something that just uefi boots into a | barebones grub2 and then cli only debian-stable and bash | shell? | | Forget the DOS part. | admax88qqq wrote: | It's probably more like they have DOS support contracted | out to some vendor. And when the systems upgraded to the | point of not being able to run DOS natively the vendor | built this franken-OS to fulfill the contract. | | Renegotiating the contract to something sensible like | "don't run DOS anymore" was probably hopeless in the face | of the bureaucracy, or risked losing to contact. | JonathonW wrote: | Windows installers are bootable these days (from DVD or USB; | doesn't matter); they haven't been runnable from DOS for a | couple decades now. | | At any rate, even if you _did_ find some OS you could install | from DOS, you'd be installing it into the QEMU image if you | installed from FreeDOS on a system with this arrangement. | There's no way to get back to the bare metal hardware from | FreeDOS here. | john_moscow wrote: | Knowing how big corporations usually work, dropping the FreeDOS | option completely due to incompatibility would require approvals | from 7 layers of corporate management, while shipping a half- | assed version that is not usable for any practical purposes only | took one nerd from engineering. | aidenn0 wrote: | I can't find a source for it, but my recollection is that MS | considers selling a PC with no operating system as encouraging | piracy of Windows. | | So I suspect this option is either due to an agreement with MS, | or an overly cautious legal department. | shmerl wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Some countries also prohibit selling laptops without any OSs | because they're unusable in that way, so this is a way to sell | a technically "fully usable laptop" for people who'll install | linux anyway. | detaro wrote: | which leaves the question of why going through the hassle of | creating this mess instead of just Linux. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Because they they have to support that linux distro, with | all the drivers, update etc.,... | | And the FreeDOS just works. Doesn't do much, but what it | does, it does well. | detaro wrote: | but the Linux they are shipping underneath that FreeDOS | _also_ works. And they also offer Linux preinstalled, so | they need to "support" that to whatever amount anyways. | Wowfunhappy wrote: | But customers can also order this laptop with Ubuntu | preinstalled. Why offer both Ubuntu _and_ FreeDOS, especially | if the latter is just running inside of a Linux VM anyway? | aidenn0 wrote: | When I last ordered from HP, many laptops did not have Linux | as an option (mine did not, so I bought the FreeDOS version) | gmiller123456 wrote: | You're probably thinking about the agreement MS had with PC | manufacturers that required them to pay for a copy of DOS | regardless of whether the computer they sold had a copy of DOS | or not. MS was barred from using that method in 1994. | | https://www.justice.gov/atr/competitive-impact-statement-us-... | grishka wrote: | Some countries have consumer protection laws that require that | a factory-assembled computer must come with an OS. This whole | FreeDOS thing feels like malicious compliance to me just to | have _something_ so it doesn 't boot into a BIOS error. | | Though I've assumed that FreeDOS runs on bare metal. This whole | Linux-with-a-VM feels strange, to say the least. | userbinator wrote: | That was far more amusing and interesting than I thought it would | be... | | I wonder if it can actually boot DOS on the physical hardware, | and if it can't ( DOS itself is very minimal in what it requires | of the hardware), is it really PC-compatible anymore? | yuhong wrote: | Intel phased out the UEFI CSM from new platforms in 2020-2021. | userbinator wrote: | I suppose you could use GRUB and whatever Coreboot has as its | BIOS? Either way, sad times indeed when PCs aren't anymore. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | seabios is the project you're looking for, and yes now I | want to go see if it supports being booted from GRUB:) | | EDIT: The answer is yes and it's been done: | https://g00se.org/2016/11/seabios-on-libreboot.html | (granted, that's booting directly from coreboot to GRUB, | but it should be the same booting UEFI to GRUB AFAIK) | Wowfunhappy wrote: | The Clover bootloader designed for Hackintosh is able to boot | UEFI operating systems (including non-Apple ones) on | computers that don't natively support UEFI. Is there any | reason a different bootloader couldn't do the reverse? | walrus01 wrote: | It's like a Linux, qemu, DOS turducken | ObscureScience wrote: | Wow. | | But it's also quite surprising considering HP (and HPE which I | understand is not very related) usually provides FreeDOS based | firmware update and configurarion ISOs on their product download | pages. | indigodaddy wrote: | Very interesting. I'm assuming there is no persistence in the | referenced live squashfs ? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-15 23:00 UTC)