Releases/1.3/RC3

The FreeDOS 1.3 RC3 distribution was released May 31, 2020 as part of the development cycle for FreeDOS 1.3

History

The FreeDOS 1.3 RC3 distribution was available in these formats:

• FD13-LiveCD.zip - the bootable LiveCD image
• FD13-LegacyCD.zip - the legacy CD image
• FD13-Floppy.zip - boot floppy for the legacy CD
• FD13-FullUSB.zip - full version of the installer, as a USB fob drive image
• FD13-LiteUSB.zip - small version of the installer, as a USB fob drive image
• FD13-x86.zip - floppy-based distribution for low-end PCs (new in FreeDOS 1.3 RC3)

Changes

New with FreeDOS 1.3-RC3 is the Floppy Diskette Edition of FreeDOS. Compared to the other media, this edition uses a completely different installer and process. It is designed to be compatible with any hardware that can run FreeDOS that has EGA or better graphics. Comprised of only a limited FreeDOS set of core programs, it installs those packages based on hardware support. Only have a 286, then no need to install the CD-Drivers that require a 386. Just got one hard drive and no CD or Floppy? No problem. Just copy the contents of the floppies to some directory and run it from there. Want to perform a headless install to a different DOS directory, piece of cake with the command line options. The best way to sum-up FD13-x86 is to say -- It is the power user installer.

Release notes

###############################################################################
FreeDOS 1.3-RC3 Installation media.
###############################################################################

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some general system requirements.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A FreeDOS FULL install with sources requires 450 MiB of free HD space.
Without sources, 250 MiB of free space will be needed.

A FreeDOS PLAIN install with sources requires 50 MiB of free HD space.
Without sources, 20 MiB of free space will be needed.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What's in all those release ZIP files?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

readme.txt
The simple "before you choose and install" document.
(All zip archives contain a copy of this README file.)

verify.txt
Contains MD5, SHA256 and SHA512 hashes for all of the different release
files.

FD13-Floppy.zip

* FD13FLOP.IMG - Basic FreeDOS installation boot floppy image for systems
that support a CD-ROM. But, the system cannot boot from either of CD-ROM
release media.

FD13-LiteUSB.zip

* FD13LITE.IMG - Plain DOS system only! This USB stick image does not
contain all of the packages that are available in a FULL install. It only
contains the basic plain DOS set of packages.

* FD13LITE.VMDK - An Virtual Machine Disk description file to simplify
attaching the LiteUSB image to a virtual machine (like VirtualBox and
vmWare) as a hard drive.

FD13-FullUSB.zip

*FD13FULL.IMG - Plain DOS system and Full install USB stick image.
(Also, includes may extra packages that are not installed in the
"Plain DOS" or even the "Full Install".  These extras can be installed
later using FDIMPLES or another package manager)

* FD13FULL.VMDK - An Virtual Machine Disk description file to simplify
attaching the FullUSB image to a virtual machine (like VirtualBox and
vmWare) as a hard drive.

FD13-LegacyCD.zip

* FD13LGCY.ISO - Contains all the packages as FD13-FullUSB. However, it
is a bootable CD image designed for older hardware. It uses the classic
El Torito Boot CD-ROM format. Some modern computers and virtual machines
are known to have issues booting CDs that use this ancient specification.
Unless you have a computer that requires this type of bootable CD, we
recommend using the LiveCD media.

FD13-LiveCD.zip

* FD13LIVE.ISO - This media is similar to the LegacyCD. However instead
of relying on the BIOS floppy disk emulation, it uses SYSLINUX and MEMDISK
to boot an emulated floppy disk. Along side support to perform a Plain and
Full installation of FreeDOS, this media is also able to run FreeDOS live
from RAM or CD (depending on computer system and hardware) without
installation to an internal hard disk drive.

FD13-x86.ZIP

New with FreeDOS 1.3-RC3 is the Floppy Diskette Edition of FreeDOS. Compared
to the other media, this edition uses a completely different installer and
process. It is designed to be compatible with any hardware that can run
FreeDOS that has EGA or better graphics. Comprised of only a limited
FreeDOS set of core programs, it installs those packages based on hardware
support. Only have a 286, then no need to install the CD-Drivers that
require a 386. Just got one hard drive and no CD or Floppy? No problem.
Just copy the contents of the floppies to some directory and run it from
there. Want to perform a headless install to a different DOS directory,
piece of cake with the command line options. The best way to sum-up
FD13-x86 is to say -- It is the power user installer.

* x86-BOOT.img - A 720 Kib 3.5" floppy boot disk with the x86 installer.

* x86-DSK?.img - Some 1.44 Mib 3.5" floppy diskette images that contain
the archived OS files.

Please note that to conserve space, the Floppy Diskette Edition does not
contain the sources for the included packages. You can obtain those sources
through the FreeDOS website (http://www.freedos.org) or from the other
release media, like USB or CD-ROM. The Floppy Diskette Edition does not
require any of those other media to perform an installation and will not
use them during installation.