MS-DOS vs Gallium OS
When comparing MS-DOS vs Gallium OS, the Slant community recommends Gallium OS for most people. In the question“What is the best laptop OS?” Gallium OS is ranked 38th while MS-DOS is ranked 62nd. The most important reason people chose Gallium OS is:
Many things work out of the box that do not with other distros, such as touchscreens.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion 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 Chromebook hardware support baked in
Many things work out of the box that do not with other distros, such as touchscreens.
Pro Chromebook specific OS
Gallium OS is engineered with Chromebook hardware in mind to make the best use of Chromebook CPU's, limited RAM, and storage limitations.
Pro Easy to install
Using chrx on Chromebook there are only two or three straightforward steps to get Gallium OS running.
Pro Lightweight
Based on Xubuntu and requires a low hardware spec. Thus it supports almost all Chrome OS devices.
Pro Dual boot
Installation option to dual-boot GalliumOS alongside ChromeOS.
Pro Battery life
Efficient in using the battery.
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 Not updated since 2019
Con Bad speaker support
Speaker support is often broken, either no sound or lots of noise/distortion.
Con Not the best looking UI
It's not the best in terms of UI but you can always install themes.
Con Too large
Too large to install on chromebook.
Con Uses Xfce
Not realy useful for touchscreen devices.
Con Firmware update
Required opening the back and removing the firmware write-protect screw and running a script.