When comparing FreeDOS vs Pop!_OS, the Slant community recommends Pop!_OS for most people. In the question“What is the best laptop OS?” Pop!_OS is ranked 15th while FreeDOS is ranked 43rd. The most important reason people chose Pop!_OS is:
If you're a fan of flat desktop interfaces reminiscent of Material design on Android, you'll like the theme that comes as a default in Pop! OS. The desktop and title bars all use a bright turquoise theme that makes the interface feel happy and borderline retro-chic. I found it to be like something you'd find printed on a ringer t-shirt.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Open Source
GNU GPL
Pro Large and friendly community
You won't be let alone, any question submitted on FreeDOS forums will be detailedly answered in a few hours time.
Pro Compatible with MS-DOS apps
Pro Supports FAT32 partition
As opposite to every MS-DOS version equal or older than 6.22, or any DR-DOS version, you won't be restricted by a 2 Gb large FAT16 partition.
Pro Highly portable OS
It takes ten minutes to make a portable, USB FreeDOS drive, All you need is a USB device FAT or FAT32 formatted (128 Mb should be enough, but a 2 GB device would be better). First make a FreeDOS bootable USB drive with a program like Rufus (on Windows) or UnetBootin (on linux or Mac). Select it at boot and run fdisk to make a Primary DOS partition and install FreeDOS on it. Final step: reboot and run fdisk again to make the new partition active (optional: delete the installer partition). After that, the system is ready to boot with any computer.
Pro Extremely lightweight
Takes less than 10 seconds to boot.
Pro Easy to dual-boot, either with any Linux distro or Windows
If you install a Linux distro after Freedos, GRUB2 will automatically detect it. As for Windows, newer EasyBCD releases implemented FreeDOS and automatically recognize it.
Pro Pop! makes GNOME look really good
If you're a fan of flat desktop interfaces reminiscent of Material design on Android, you'll like the theme that comes as a default in Pop! OS. The desktop and title bars all use a bright turquoise theme that makes the interface feel happy and borderline retro-chic. I found it to be like something you'd find printed on a ringer t-shirt.
Pro User-friendly installer
The visually appealing and easy to use installer makes dual booting as easy as it can be.
Pro Nice gnome theme dy default
Has nice gnome theme looks really good.
Pro Ready to play games, out of the box
If you still miss how easy it was to just click-install and play games in Windows, Pop! will give you that similar expectation.
Pro A separate NVIDIA version
Most linux distros seem to hate Nvidia's graphics cards e.g. Fedora and OpenSUSE. System76 have decided to be kind. They have decided to form a good relationship with Nvidia fans and Nvidia itself. By creating a separate installation media that is dedicated for providing support to Nvidia's graphics cards. Even going as far as putting Nvidia's driver updates on Pop!_Shop for users to easily access and install.
Pro Optimized for modern hardware
Whereas normally, to use a brand new computer with a Linux OS, you would typically try to use unstable and sometimes buggy drivers - or struggle without hardware support until a stable release comes along.
Pro Made by a hardware seller
System76 is a hardware company. It configures machines to ship with Linux pre-installed. This means its entire business model centers around delivering a quality desktop Linux experience.
As a result, the company pours more attention onto the desktop. It can fix visual issues and may be able to provide a smoother overall experience than you would have installing a different version of Linux on your machine yourself. Providing Pop!_OS also empowers System76 to make certain fixes for users directly rather than having to coordinate with Canonical or the broader Ubuntu community.
Cons
Con Unlikely going to be your PC main OS
If looking for a lightweight OS, and thinking of FreeDOS as a possible option, consider that it will only useful when having to deal with legacy software, or other dos-based programs still commonly used at workplaces. Nonetheless it's a fantastic solution for Retro-Gamers who still own a a supported sound card. However the lack of modern software makes it hard to accomplish common everyday tasks, such us opening a document written in UTF-8, not mentioning, obviously docx and pdf files. The best choice is to install it on a USB drive, in order to have a portable OS, with basic hardware and all your files (and if you want games) ready to be launched with every machine. Useful to edit partitions, as well as restore MBR, check errors, install a light bootmanager on any kind of FAT partiton of every IDE-mode compatible hard-disk.
Con Obvious lack of sound card drivers
If you own a sound card produced after than 2000, you won't find a driver to make it work.
Con 64-bit only
Some older PCs still have 32 Bit processors. This limitation will be a major con for those who use an older PC since they will not be able to install, run it in a VM or live media