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Add to SafariWhen comparing MS-DOS vs FreeBSD, the Slant community recommends FreeBSD for most people. In the question“What is the best operating system for a developer?” FreeBSD is ranked 5th while MS-DOS is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose FreeBSD is:
Ports provide a wide collection of software which are easy to build, install and modify. They contain recipes and patches to build various software, so you can simply run "make && make install" to build and install the software. You may also keep local patches and it would be picked up automatically. It also allows you to use the latest software even if you are not using the latest version of the operating system.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Use old editor Edit
The grandfather of Notepad, very easy to use, hassle-free text editor.
Pro Brings back memories to older developers
Pro Best OS to run QBASIC on
While QBASIC works on newer operating systems, such as Windows 95 and Windows 98, it was designed for and runs best on MS-DOS.
Pro Powerful ports collection
Ports provide a wide collection of software which are easy to build, install and modify. They contain recipes and patches to build various software, so you can simply run "make && make install" to build and install the software. You may also keep local patches and it would be picked up automatically. It also allows you to use the latest software even if you are not using the latest version of the operating system.
Pro Batteries included
Base system contains basic developer tools, including compiler, debugger and system utilities.
Pro Jails mechanism
Jails allow for partitioning a system into several independent "mini-systems", a feature not found in many of the popular OS choices.
Pro Stable updates
Pro Great philosophy
FreeBSD won't change everything from a version to another, it tries to keep and maintain old tools as long as possible, and won't replace half the system every two versions like GNU/Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Arch or Fedora does. everything is stable and also pretty minimal. FreeBSD is designed for performance.
Cons
Con Not a modern OS
If you need to know how to run legacy software that will run on DOS (crazier things have happened, there's probably still some ancient, leviathan, software out there that requires it), go for it. Otherwise you're practicing skills that are out of date and are using an operating system that is woefully insecure.
Con Literally horrible
MS-DOS is terrible -- just read about real mode. It was an almost decent solution for its time, but not anymore.
Con Way too simple
A stripped down version of Unix, some commands just got renamed and advanced options removed.
Con Dead
Ended in the 21st century.
Con No internet support
Using Internet with MS-DOS is not trivial.
Con Pathetic third-party application support
Need to run Photoshop? No luck. Even most software that's portable to Linux will have a hard time running on FreeBSD. You're stuck with ONLY running the free software.
Con Inferior driver support for workstations
Lack of drivers for some modern personal devices.
Con Not for beginners
If a user needs an easy way to navigate around the filesystem, a text only Unix-derivative is not his best choice.
Con Very shallow desktop support
