Editing FreeDOS (section)

== Development and version history ==
{| class="wikitable" style="float: right; margin: 0 1.25em"
|+ FreeDOS version history<ref name="FDOS_Download" /><ref name="FreeDOS-Comparison" /><ref name="FreeDOS-Old" />
|-
! Version || Status || Codename || Date
|-
| 0.01 || [[alpha release|ALPHA]] || {{CNone|None}} || style="text-align:right;" | 16 September 1994
|-
| 0.02 || ALPHA || {{CNone|None}} || style="text-align:right;" | December 1994
|-
| 0.03 || ALPHA || {{CNone|None}} || style="text-align:right;" | January 1995
|-
| 0.04 || ALPHA || {{CNone|None}} || style="text-align:right;" | June 1995<ref>{{Cite web |date=1996-12-25 |title=The Free-DOS Project - Files [Free-DOS Alpha 4 archive comment and files give date 28 June 1995 - but it could be an update] |url=http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19961225065126/http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files.html |archive-date=1996-12-25 |access-date=2023-07-06 |website=Free-DOS (sunsite)}}</ref>
|-
| 0.05 || ALPHA || {{CNone|None}} || style="text-align:right;" | 10 August 1996
|-
| 0.06 || ALPHA || {{CNone|None}} || style="text-align:right;" | November 1997
|-
| 0.1 || [[beta release|BETA]] || Orlando || style="text-align:right;" | 25 March 1998
|-
| 0.2 || BETA || Marvin || style="text-align:right;" | 28 October 1998
|-
| 0.3 || BETA || Ventura || style="text-align:right;" | 21 April 1999
|-
| 0.4 || BETA || Lemur || style="text-align:right;" | 9 April 2000
|-
| 0.5 || BETA || Lara || style="text-align:right;" | 10 August 2000
|-
| 0.6 || BETA || Midnite || style="text-align:right;" | 18 March 2001
|-
| 0.7 || BETA || Spears || style="text-align:right;" | 7 September 2001
|-
| 0.8 || BETA || Nikita || style="text-align:right;" | 7 April 2002
|-
| 0.9 || BETA || {{CNone|None}} || style="text-align:right;" | 28 September 2004
|-
| 1.0 || FINAL || {{CNone|None}} || style="text-align:right;" | 3 September 2006
|-
| 1.1 || FINAL || {{CNone|None}} || style="text-align:right;" | 2 January 2012
|-
| 1.2 || FINAL || {{CNone|None}} || style="text-align:right;" | 25 December 2016
|-
| 1.3 || FINAL || {{CNone|None}} || style="text-align:right;" | 20 February 2022
|-
| 1.4 || FINAL || {{CNone|None}} || style="text-align:right;" | 5 April 2025
|}
The FreeDOS project began on 29 June 1994, after [[Microsoft]] announced it would no longer sell or support MS-DOS. [[Jim Hall (computer programmer)|Jim Hall]], who at the time was a student,<ref name="FLOSS" /> posted a manifesto proposing the development of PD-DOS, a [[public domain]] version of DOS.<ref name="Hall_1994_Announcement" /> Within a few weeks, other programmers including [[Pat Villani]] and Tim Norman joined the project. Between them, a kernel (by Villani), the [[COMMAND.COM]] command line interpreter (by Villani and Norman), and core utilities (by Hall) were created by pooling code they had written or found available.<ref name="linuxdevices" /><ref name="Hall_2006_About" /> For some time, the project was maintained by Morgan "Hannibal" Toal. There have been many official pre-release distributions of FreeDOS before the final FreeDOS 1.0 distribution.<ref name="FreeDOS-History" /> GNU/DOS, an unofficial distribution of FreeDOS, was discontinued after version 1.0 was released.<ref name="Adams_2005" /><ref name="Marinof_GNU/DOS" />[[File:Blinky.svg|thumb|right|150px|Blinky, the mascot of FreeDOS]]Blinky the Fish is the mascot of FreeDOS. He was designed by Bas Snabilie.<ref name="FD_Logo" />