If you do not want to spend all of your hard earned money on expensive notebook computers then you should look forward to getting notebook PC without any proprietary operating system pre-installed on it. In fact, these proprietary operating systems like Windows add to the overall cost of the PC and make it even more costlier than it actually is. If you get a notebook PC with Linux or FreeDOS installed, then you will not only save money but will have the flexibility of installing any compatible operating system of your choice. For example, you can later get Windows 10 and install it on the new notebook computer.
I recently bought a Lenovo notebook computer that runs on FreeDOS. Then later on I installed Ubuntu Linux on it without any problems. Because of some DVD drive problem, I had to return the product as it was still under warranty. But before I could do that, I had to reinstall FreeDOS back which I found pretty easy thing to do. Here is how you can install FreeDOS on any PC that is able to run Windows or Linux:
- First of all download a copy of FreeDOS operating system. You can download the FreeDOS ISO image and then use a tool like Rufus to create a bootable FreeDOS USB disk from it.
- Plug in the newly created bootable USB disk to your PC and boot from it. You may have to choose the options in the UEFI/BIOS to boot from the USB disk. When the FreeDOS screen prompt appears, choose to Install to hard disk option.
- Next screen could be confusing as it offers to format and repartition your hard disk. Most users already have the hard disk ready to go and can choose 1 to proceed and start installing the FreeDOS. But if your hard disk is not partitioned properly, then you may have to run FDISK program and partition it.
- On the next screen, you have to choose one of the languages to be used as the FreeDOS user interface language as well as the keyboard layout.
- Now you can just select Start Installation of FreeDOS to start the various packages. By default, it installs only the base package, but you can customize the installation on the next screen.
- Before it continues with the installation, you have to select various packages like base, gui, net, boot, util. The more packages you select, the longer it will take to install.
- Read the newspaper, listen to music, have some coffee or do some other chores. When you come back after a few minutes, FreeDOS will be ready to be used on your PC.
Conclusion: FreeDOS is a basic operating system provided free of cost to everyone who does not want the expensive operating systems and enjoy the simplicity of computing at its best. It is easy to install on any PC and yet easier to use than most of the operating systems available today.
You can download FreeDOS from http://www.freedos.org/download/.