As the forerunner to the graphical user interfaces in Microsoft’s Windows platform, MS-DOS helped set the stage for the company’s dominance in the PC software market. When MS-DOS was released in 1981, ...

Microsoft’s MS-DOS (and its IBM-branded counterpart, PC DOS) eventually became software juggernauts, powering the vast majority of PCs throughout the ’80s and serving as the underpinnings of Windows ...

Unlock the full InfoQ experience by logging in! Stay updated with your favorite authors and topics, engage with content, and download exclusive resources. Vivek Yadav, an engineering manager from ...

FreeDOS, the free and open-source alternative to Microsoft DOS (MS-DOS), just released a new major update. It still has excellent compatibility with MS-DOS software, including Windows 3.1 and earlier, ...

TL;DR: Microsoft will likely never release the original source code of Windows into the wild, but the company is clearly interested in sharing important episodes of its software development history.

Microsoft, like any company, has its detractors. Everyone from computer scientists to people who just hate Windows 10 have gone after it at some point. But an old, ugly rumor has just come back, with ...

A decades-old quarrel over a defining event in computer history -- the creation of the program that propelled Microsoft to dominance -- has suddenly become a legal dispute that could lead to a public ...

Building a complete operating system by compiling its source code is not something for the faint-hearted; a modern Linux or BSD distribution contains thousands of packages with millions of lines of ...

Ernie Smith is a former contributor to EdTech and a tech history nut who researches vintage operating systems for fun. Given all the options for computing in the modern day — tablets, laptops and ...

Who doesn’t remember PC games such as Maniac Mansion, the King’s Quest series and the dubious adventures of Leisure Suit Larry or software such as Microsoft Works and Lotus Smart Suite? These titles ...

In context: Back in 1980, Tim Paterson was creating a new operating system he called QDOS or Quick and Dirty Operating System. The system was later renamed 86-DOS, as it was being designed to run on ...

Gary Kildall started Intergalactic Digital Research (later shortened to Digital Research or just DRI) and created the first microcomputer operating system, CP/M, used on many hobbyist personal ...