Survey/2021

FreeDOS posted a user survey in 2021 to understand how usage had changed. The previous user survey was in 2012.

These results are as reported by Jim Hall on the freedos-devel email list:

Overview

We had 353 total responses, which is not bad. Of these, ten responses were invalid (test data, blank, etc) which means 343 valid responses. I would have been satisfied with 200, so I was very glad that we got over 300.

I'm sure we had a few duplicate responses, but I didn't see evidence in the data of "stuffing" the responses. Overall, I think a few duplicates don't affect the final data.

Responses by day: (the "peaks" match up with when I shared reminder tweets about the survey)

6/27/21: ######################################################## [56]
6/28/21: ###################################################### [54]
6/29/21: ############################# [29]
6/30/21: ############# [13]
7/01/21: ##################### [21]
7/02/21: ############ [12]
7/03/21: ############ [12]
7/04/21: ########## [10]
7/05/21: ################ [16]
7/06/21: ############## [14]
7/07/21: ############## [14]
7/08/21: ########################################### [43]
7/09/21: #################### [20]
7/10/21: ################ [16]
7/11/21: ############# [13]

The survey asked 4 questions:

1. What do you use FreeDOS for? (to play games, to run DOS apps at home/work, ..)
2. How do you run FreeDOS? (in a virtual machine, on recent hardware, ..)
3. Do you dual-boot FreeDOS (No, Yes + what OS)
4. What is your level of DOS experience

Questions 1 and 4 were good questions. A few people seemed confused by question 2. And question 3 was just poorly worded. (Actual question was "Does FreeDOS share the same hardware with another operating system?" and I think a lot of people said "Yes" when they were actually running in a virtual machine.)

Results

1. What do you use FreeDOS for?

• To play DOS games
• To run DOS software at home
• To run DOS software for work
• To support an embedded application
• To develop new DOS programs
• To update the BIOS on my PC
• Other

Sifting through the "Other" results, some people used "Other" to provide details about what software they were running. But a few indicated some newer use scenarios that were not in the options. These were variations on "Using FreeDOS to test systems and software" and "Using FreeDOS to recover systems."

Games: ################################################### [204]
Home: ############################################################# [243]
Work: ############ [45]
Devel: ########################### [108]
Embed: ###### [23]
BIOS: #################### [80]
+Recovery: ## [8]
+Testing: ## [7]

2. How do you run FreeDOS?

• On classic PC hardware (1981 to 2000: XT, AT, '386, '486, ..)
• On recent PC hardware (2000 to 2020)
• On modern PC hardware (2020 or 2021)
• In a virtual machine (VirtualBox, QEMU, DOSEMU, ..)
• Other

Sorting through the "Other" results, people used this field to tell me exactly what hardware they were running. So nothing new was added here.

However, the results clearly suggest I didn't write the question clearly enough, so a lot of people misunderstood the question. I meant this question to ask "do you run FreeDOS in a virtual machine, or on 'bare metal' hardware?" And maybe I should have asked it that way.

For example, a few folks did not answer "virtual box" but indicated in "Other" that they used DOSEmu or DOSBox (neither was suggested in the "virtual machine" option). Instead, these respondents answered "modern" or "recent" PC hardware.

Also note that "modern" PC hardware was defined as a system from 2020 or 2021. This was a "control" option, because an Intel system released in 2020 or 2021 does not support BIOS, and does not have the "Legacy" option in UEFI. So at least those 49 are wrong.

Virtual: ######################################################## [222]
Classic: ############################ [112]
Recent: ################################################ [190]
Modern: ############# [49]

3. Does FreeDOS share the same hardware with another system?

• No (FreeDOS is the only operating system)
• Yes (Linux)
• Yes (Windows)
• Yes (another DOS)
• Yes (some other PC operating system)

The details of the question (in smaller print underneath the question itself) said that if you run FreeDOS in a virtual machine, you should only answer "no" because this was about dual-booting. And while many answered the question that way, many others did not.

Because I asked the wrong question, the results were weird. Comparing the responses with question 2, a lot of people who run FreeDOS only in a VM (they didn't indicate real hardware) answered "Yes" on this question. I don't trust the results on this one.

FreeDOS: ##################################################### [157]
Linux: ############################ [83]
Windows: ###################### [64]
DOS: #### [12]
other: ######### [25]

4. What is your level of DOS experience?

1. I don't know that much about DOS, I'm still learning ... 10. I feel like an expert in using DOS

A few folks didn't answer this question, so I've indicated those blank responses as "?"

?: ### [3]
(beginner)
1: ####### [7]
2: ####### [7]
3: ######## [8]
4: ########################### [27]
5: ################################# [33]
6: ########################## [26]
7: ######################################################## [56]
8: ################################################################# [65]
9: #################################################### [52]
10: ########################################################### [59]
(expert)

Analysis

Jim posted the survey results (data) to freedos-devel on July 13, 2021 and there was very little discussion until posting this analysis on July 25:

1. What do you use FreeDOS for?

Not too surprising that the results have shifted here since the last time we did a user survey (I think 8 years ago). A lot of people are using FreeDOS for personal stuff, like playing games or running other DOS programs at home. "Games" and "Home" account for 62% of the results.

Next up is "Devel" at 108 total count, or 15% of the results. And that's probably not a surprise either, since the survey included the FreeDOS email list. :-)

And we're still seeing people using FreeDOS to install BIOS updates. 11% of respondents indicated they use FreeDOS to update BIOS.

Interesting to see some folks are still using FreeDOS to run embedded systems.

2. How do you run FreeDOS?

This question is hard to interpret because I clearly asked the question in the wrong way. But I think the "virtual machine" and "classic hardware" responses are safe.

I'd estimate half of "recent" and "modern" responses really indicate running FreeDOS on a virtual machine .. and the "recent" and "modern" responses were really an indication of what the *host* system was. If adjust numbers with that assumption:

• Virtual 341
• Classic 112 (1981-2000)
• Recent 95 (2000-2020)
• Modern 24 (2020-2021)

That suggests over half (59%) of respondents use virtual machines to boot FreeDOS, and 19% run FreeDOS on classic hardware (1981-2000). And the rest run FreeDOS on more recent hardware.

I doubt anyone is really running FreeDOS on bare metal on a machine made in 2020 or 2021. At least for Intel systems, the PC spec says these machines do not include BIOS (they are UEFI only) and do not support "Legacy" mode in UEFI. But some may have misinterpreted the question .. as Eric suggests, some folks may have purchased parts to build their own systems, or maybe purchased an AMD system which does still support "Legacy" boot mode.

Comment from Eric: It is not forbidden for post-2019 PC to support legacy boot, no? And people can buy new pre-2020 mainboards in 2021. I am not sure whether your question explicitly asked for the model design year.

Discussion: Yes, as I said, I asked the question the wrong way. So this ended up being a bad question.

3. Does FreeDOS share the same hardware with another system?

This is another poorly worded question. I think the best we can say is a majority of people use FreeDOS on its own (probably on its own virtual machine instance) and some people dual-boot FreeDOS with something else (more likely to be "DOS" than Linux or Windows, but we know anecdotally there are a few of those out there too.)

4. What is your level of DOS experience?

Not surprising to me, since I get a lot of emails from folks who clearly are experiencing DOS for the first time.

I can see three "plateaus" in this chart: "beginner user" (6% are 1-3) "some experience" (25% are 4-6) and "more experienced" (68% are 7-10).

Conclusions

..