Five Free Operating Systems

The five operating systems (OS) that we have for you in this

issue are really small. After all, they all fitted on to the same CD with plenty

of room for other software. In a day and age when standard OSs span multiple

CDs, what place do these smaller ones have in the larger scheme of things?

Plenty actually!

Today India has an installed base of about five million PCs.

And about half of them are so old that they’ll have to desperately struggle to

run an OS like Win 98. Does that mean that users who use them should give up the

pleasures of browsing the Web or sending e-mail? It’s here that the smaller

OSs make their mark. QNX, for example, can provide fast and fully graphical Web

browsing with all the bells and whistles on a 486. What if you don’t want all

the functionality built into the OS majors, but just one function, say that of a

proxy server. Again a 486 or a Pentium 100, running one of the smaller Linux

machines, can do the job admirably.

QNX RTP (Real Time Platform)

Hybrid of a Real Time OS and a Platform OS

This modular RTOS runs happily on an old x486 with 16 MB RAM

for console applications. To run its full-featured GUI properly, just add 16 MB

more.

The OS has a small footprint and auto-detects a host of cards

including display, network, and sound. Installation is straightforward. The

executable (in the/os/qnx directory in the CD) runs from within Windows and

installs QNX on the same file system. You are also given the option of creating

a boot floppy if you want. The machine then goes in for a re-boot. Upon reboot,

the Windows boot menu gives you the option of booting into Windows, QNX RTP or

QNX RTP (DMA Disabled) mode. Boot into QNX RTP and the OS detects and mounts

your devices and file systems.

Login to the Photon GUI with your username and password and

enter the world of QNX. Applications included are full-featured browser

(Voyager), e-mail client (V-mail), media player (phplay), editors, and a

graphics package. You can use the Package Manager to download and install more

stuff from its WWW Repository.

Work on it for around an hour and believe us, you’ll be

hooked for good. Strongly recommended, especially if you have an older machine.

Dragon Linux

(Lite version is on the CD with console and networking

utilities only) Installs in your Windows partition

A free Linux distribution, which demands only a 486 processor

with 8 MB of RAM to run the console applications or 32-64 MB for a full-fledged

X-Window system. For a change, installation is simple. It can be installed from

a DOS or Windows partition. Create a directory C:\DRAGON. Unzip DRAGONLINUX.ZIP

from /os directory and copy the ‘DRAGON’ directory to it. Now restart into

full MS-DOS mode. Next, run ‘SETUP.BAT’ found in the C:\DRAGON\SETUP

DIRECTORY. In the login prompt presented, type ‘ROOT’ and then ‘SETUP’.

This will start an installation wizard, which will guide you through setting up

Dragon Linux. You’ll be prompted for the packages or applications you want to

install. Since we haven’t included X-Window packages, you’ll not be able to

install KDE or GNOME. You will then be asked for the amount of disk space to

allocate for Dragon Linux. Dragon Linux doesn’t support more than 2 GB of hard

disk space. After all the selected packages are installed, the installation

finishes with a reboot.

You can’t run Dragon Linux from within an MS-DOS window. So

you need to be in full DOS mode. Change to the directory C:\DRAGON and issue the

command ‘DRAGON’. After a booting sequence, you are shown a login prompt.

Login as root with no password, as the password has not been setup yet. It’s

advisable to set up the root password at this point by using the ‘PASSWD’

command.

Dragon Linux includes the Slackware Linux utility called ‘SETUP’.

This will aid you in configuring your system, setting up the mouse, network,

dial-up connection, etc. Read the Readme file (included in dragonlinux.zip) for

using ‘SETUP’.

You can download additional packages like X-Windows (KDE,

GNOME), GIMP (a powerful graphics editor), Emacs, etc, from http://dragonlinux.net/.

These are Slackware packages and can be installed using ‘installpkg’

command. Dragon Linux also has limited support for RPM packages.

muLinux

A fully-configurable, application-centric and tiny

distribution

muLinux installs on the Windows or DOS partition and requires

a minimum of a 386 processor with 8 MB of RAM. It bundles many packages

including those for console, networking, and X-Window.

Let’s get straight into setting it up. Copy the directory

mulinux from the /os directory on the CD to C:\. Unzip ‘DOS TOOLS.ZIP’ in

the same directory. Now restart the computer in full DOS mode. Change to the

directory C:\MULINUX and type ‘INSTALL’. In the first screen, select the

second option, which would install muLinux in the directory C:\LINUX. The

compressed archive is uncompressed and then the system reboots. After the

reboot, go to full-DOS by using the F8 key. Change to the directory C:\LINUX and

type ‘LINUX’. This will start up an interactive setup where you’ll go

through a massive (but very helpful because the configuration files need not be

edited later) question and answer session that covers the entire range from

setting up your keyboard to setting up networking.

You are asked to create a swap space, which can be skipped if

you have enough RAM say more than 128 MB. Otherwise leave swap file name as

/SWAP/LINUX.SWP. The swap file size can be selected to 64 MB.

You are asked to configure keyboard and also some add-ons

including X-Windows. Select Skip when you are asked to upgrade, as these add-ons

have already been setup. Specify the serial and parallel ports to which your

mouse, modem, and printer are connected. Remember ttys0 is COM1 and lp0 is LPT1.

Let mouse protocol be the default.

For networking, you are asked for the model of your Ethernet

card and only six network card models of EtherLink, Intel, RealTek, and AMD are

supported. Then though a series of questions, which are well explained, you can

configure your network, NFS services for Linux–Linux sharing and SAMBA for

Windows-Linux sharing. If you choose to have PPP support, you can configure your

dial-up connection. Subsequently you can configure Fetchmail for retrieving mail

from a POP3 account. muLinux auto detects your IDE CD-ROM drive. Finally you can

decide what daemons or background processes you need to run at startup.

You are now given the login prompt. Login, start up X-Windows

using the startx command and you are ready to swing!

FreeDOS BETA5 ("LARA")

Full distributionIf you are a DOS lover, you’ll love this

This is a free and fully MS-DOS compatible OS. System

requirements are minimal and it installs on a x486 with as little as 8 MB RAM.

The distribution on the CD has zipped files and you need ‘UNZIP’

(included) to extract the installation disks. Keep a pack of formatted 3½"

floppies at hand. Through the DOS prompt, Unzip ‘BASE1. ZIP’ using the

command UNZIP BASE1. ZIP —d A: (note the lowercase -d). This is the only

floppy you need for the Mini FreeDOS distribution. For the full version, repeat

the unzip process with rest of the install disks. Now you need to install the

Boot floppy image. Use ‘RAWRITE’ (included in the package). Run RAWRITE from

DOS prompt, read the .BIN image file (MINI.BIN for Mini version and FULL.BIN for

Full version) and write to a preformatted floppy in A: drive. Now you are ready

to install FreeDOS.

Reboot and start your PC with the boot floppy you created.

You are left at the DOS prompt. You can install FreeDOS in a folder in the

existing partition or work purely on FreeDOS. Use FDISK and FOR MAT at the

prompt in the latter case. Then run INSTALL at the prompt. Give the location

from where you’ll install as A: and the destination can be C:\FDOS. Pop in the

install floppies you created one after the other. The process is a bit slow due

to slow FDD access. Alternatively you can install from the hard disk directly.

Note, however, that in this case you’ll have to unzip all the install floppies

in one single directory say C:\FDINSTALL and give the source path accordingly

after booting up.

The package also includes the Seal GUI for FreeDOS.

MINIX

A small, free UNIX clone for those who want to peep into Unix

Unlike Linux which requires at least a 386 processor to run,

Minix can be run even on an 8088 or 80286. Basic memory requirements are as low

as 3 MB.

On our CD we have the 386 precompiled binaries (i386.tar).

The procedure for Minix installation is outlined in readme.txt and install.txt.

Unzip the i386.tar using Winzip to get the three files Root, Usr, and Usr.taz.

Then you create the Minix bootable floppies using FDVOL utility. This is also

included on the CD. These floppies are then used to boot the machine and install

the OS. We have also included zipped files for the compiler, debugger,

networking utilities, etc, in the package. DOSUTILS come in handy to prepare

your hard disk for the installation.

Shekhar Govindarajan and Ashish Sharma