When comparing FreeDOS vs Endeavour OS, the Slant community recommends Endeavour OS for most people. In the question“What is the best laptop OS?” Endeavour OS is ranked 30th while FreeDOS is ranked 43rd. The most important reason people chose Endeavour OS is:
Lean, fast and surprisingly stable.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
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 Good overall system quality and performance
Lean, fast and surprisingly stable.
Pro Great hardware support
Pro No restrictive handholding, pure control over everything
The user can do whatever he wishes because the distro IS Arch - with and easy installer and great themes.
Pro Fast and simple package management
There can only be one Package Manager (pacman) ;)
Pro Easy installer
Pro Great for low performance hardware
Easy on the specs and still blazingly fast.
Pro Lightweight
Pro Arch Linux Wiki
Being an "easy to install version of Arch" means it is exactly easy to use the famous Arch Wiki!
Pro As slim as you want it
Based on Arch, Endevour OS keeps its core repositories slim and free of unnecessary dependencies. The distro comes with no bloatware, only the necessary packages. The repositories are nearly as full as those of Ubuntu, while they are often more up to date.
Pro AUR support
One of the best reasons to use an Arch based distro.
You can find almost every package there is in the Linux world!
Pro Stripped down to the bone
Since its stripped down, it is fast and you don't have to deal with bloatware.
Pro Great XFCE implementation
Their use of themes and configuration look great!
Pro Not based on Ubuntu
Pro Cutting edge rolling release
Exactly as Arch - allows users to stay on the most up-to-date versions of the software they are using.
Pro Support for a large variety of new hardware
Rolling release means newer, up to date, mesa and kernel versions able to handle newer hardware with better performance!
Pro Helpful community
Great team of developers and excellent forum support on their official website.
Pro Great 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 NET installer on the way
Con Not for everyone
Con Kalu needs a little refinement
I applaud the developers to carry on the legacy of Antergos, the only niggling thing that I would appreciate is, while it's nice to see news about updates; my opinion is that once you dismiss the notifications they STAY dismissed. And just clicking on the icon brings kalu brings it to the foreground. Or have the functionality of turning off the news altogether would be well received. Good distro.
Con Same Cons that apply for Arch Linux
Since it is based on Arch, it is harder to install and can easily break.