{"slug": "dr-dos", "name": "DR-DOS", "category": "os", "category_name": "Operating systems and desktop", "description": "", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 5, "warners": 0, "score": 4.401, "rising": -0.31, "first": "2025-11-03", "latest": "2026-08-03", "why": "I was a DR-DOS 6.0 user and it was great, 7.0 seemed to be worse.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 2, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 1, 3, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I was a DR-DOS 6.0 user and it was great, 7.0 seemed to be worse.", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["DR-DOS", "DR DOS"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 786492224, "item_id": 49155764, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49155764", "by": "lproven", "date": "2026-08-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "DR leapfrogged with DR-DOS 5: all that, but smaller, with built-in memory management.", "excerpt": "I don't want to just quibble for the fun of it but so much more of this is wrong than right that it's downright misleading. > I'm pretty sure CP/M 86 was already a thing. Yes it was. Launched after the IBM PC, though, which is why SCP wrote QDOS which they licensed to MS and became MS-DOS. How and why it was late: https://nemanjatrifunovic.substack.com/p/the-late-arrival-of-16-bit-cpm > I believe there was even Concu", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "CP/M-386 \u2013 CP/M for 386 protected mode, derived from CP/M\u201168K"}, {"id": 760398353, "item_id": 47524897, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47524897", "by": "cout", "date": "2026-03-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "until I switched to DR DOS 5", "excerpt": "What was buggy about DOS 4? I ran it for years until I switched to DR DOS 5.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "MS-DOS 4", "story": "What Happened to Gem?"}, {"id": 760244976, "item_id": 47515311, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47515311", "by": "igravious", "date": "2026-03-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "DR-DOS was more than alright", "excerpt": "DR-DOS was more than alright, if Microsoft hadn't smothered it the computing world would look very very different today \u2026 I'm sure this is a mostly forgotten part of computing lore; apologies for the Gemini's Overview: \u201cMicrosoft actively stifled DR-DOS in the early 1990s through anti-competitive tactics, primarily using the \"AARD code\" in Windows 3.1, which deliberately created compatibility errors to scare users aw", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "What Happened to Gem?"}, {"id": 758218784, "item_id": 47388674, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47388674", "by": "jmclnx", "date": "2026-03-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I was a DR-DOS 6.0 user and it was great, 7.0 seemed to be worse.", "excerpt": "I was a DR-DOS 6.0 user and it was great, 7.0 seemed to be worse. But by then I had moved to Coherent then Linux when MW closed down. I will need to give DR-DOS a try.", "context": "", "use_case": "DOS operating system", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Official DR DOS Website"}, {"id": 752790288, "item_id": 47049393, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47049393", "by": "ndiddy", "date": "2026-02-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For a while it had more features and ran better than MS-DOS.", "excerpt": "DR DOS was Digital Research's MS-DOS clone. For a while it had more features and ran better than MS-DOS. In the mid-90s, Caldera bought the rights to DR DOS so they could bundle it with their OpenLinux Linux distribution. They briefly released its source code (renamed to \"OpenDOS\"), but not as an open source license. The license only allowed free use for educational and evaluation purposes. You were required to buy a", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "SvarDOS \u2013 an open-source DOS distribution"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["dos operating system"], "compared": [], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47461766", "title": "What Happened to Gem?", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49149898", "title": "CP/M-386 \u2013 CP/M for 386 protected mode, derived from CP/M\u201168K", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47387997", "title": "The Official DR DOS Website", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47196864", "title": "DOS Memory Management", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47044293", "title": "SvarDOS \u2013 an open-source DOS distribution", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45790293", "title": "Writing FreeDOS Programs in C", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 3}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 786492224, "item_id": 49155764, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49155764", "by": "lproven", "date": "2026-08-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "DR leapfrogged with DR-DOS 5: all that, but smaller, with built-in memory management.", "excerpt": "I don't want to just quibble for the fun of it but so much more of this is wrong than right that it's downright misleading. > I'm pretty sure CP/M 86 was already a thing. Yes it was. Launched after the IBM PC, though, which is why SCP wrote QDOS which they licensed to MS and became MS-DOS. How and why it was late: https://nemanjatrifunovic.substack.com/p/the-late-arrival-of-16-bit-cpm > I believe there was even Concu", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "CP/M-386 \u2013 CP/M for 386 protected mode, derived from CP/M\u201168K"}, {"id": 760398353, "item_id": 47524897, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47524897", "by": "cout", "date": "2026-03-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "until I switched to DR DOS 5", "excerpt": "What was buggy about DOS 4? I ran it for years until I switched to DR DOS 5.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "MS-DOS 4", "story": "What Happened to Gem?"}, {"id": 760244976, "item_id": 47515311, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47515311", "by": "igravious", "date": "2026-03-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "DR-DOS was more than alright", "excerpt": "DR-DOS was more than alright, if Microsoft hadn't smothered it the computing world would look very very different today \u2026 I'm sure this is a mostly forgotten part of computing lore; apologies for the Gemini's Overview: \u201cMicrosoft actively stifled DR-DOS in the early 1990s through anti-competitive tactics, primarily using the \"AARD code\" in Windows 3.1, which deliberately created compatibility errors to scare users aw", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "What Happened to Gem?"}, {"id": 758218784, "item_id": 47388674, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47388674", "by": "jmclnx", "date": "2026-03-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I was a DR-DOS 6.0 user and it was great, 7.0 seemed to be worse.", "excerpt": "I was a DR-DOS 6.0 user and it was great, 7.0 seemed to be worse. But by then I had moved to Coherent then Linux when MW closed down. I will need to give DR-DOS a try.", "context": "", "use_case": "DOS operating system", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Official DR DOS Website"}, {"id": 755698416, "item_id": 47231151, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47231151", "by": "lproven", "date": "2026-03-03", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "He was running Dr -dos", "excerpt": "> He was running Dr -dos Yep, that made it a bit easier. Still around, you know! It's the kernel of SvarDOS. http://svardos.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "DOS Memory Management"}, {"id": 752790288, "item_id": 47049393, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47049393", "by": "ndiddy", "date": "2026-02-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For a while it had more features and ran better than MS-DOS.", "excerpt": "DR DOS was Digital Research's MS-DOS clone. For a while it had more features and ran better than MS-DOS. In the mid-90s, Caldera bought the rights to DR DOS so they could bundle it with their OpenLinux Linux distribution. They briefly released its source code (renamed to \"OpenDOS\"), but not as an open source license. The license only allowed free use for educational and evaluation purposes. You were required to buy a", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "SvarDOS \u2013 an open-source DOS distribution"}, {"id": 732803921, "item_id": 45800245, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45800245", "by": "lproven", "date": "2025-11-03", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Back in the 20th century I used DR-DOS", "excerpt": "Neither. Because they are not aiming for: > a free bug-for-bug compatible version FreeDOS is significantly different from \"real\" MS-DOS. Back in the 20th century I used DR-DOS, written by Digital Research, the company behind the original OS of which DOS was an unauthorised re-implementation. (DR CP/M-86 was years late, so SCP wrote 86-DOS as a replacement. MS licensed 86-DOS and later bought it. It's not a clone: CP/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Writing FreeDOS Programs in C"}]}