"DOS 7.1" is just the DOS that was bundled with Windows 98 with the version string changed to 7.1.

It's the one I use.

Hi Lualb, there are many DOSes out there! 😃
But it really depends on what you're looking for.

FAT32 support is probably a modern day requirement for gamers, though.
For example, there's FreeDOS, MS-DOS 7.1/8, IBM PC-DOS 7.1, PTS-DOS v7.0 (aka PTS-DOS 32).

Other DOSes are mentioned here:
Memory ranking - 23 DOS KERNELS
Conventional Memory consumption of various DOSes

I use MS-DOS 7 most of the time on a DOS/98SE system for games. For Win 3.11 I have a bootable zip disk with an MS-DOS 6.22 base. I did that purely because I figured that it was what 3.x was designed to work with so I'd probably have less issues. It does work exactly as intended, but I also haven't really tried any other flavours of DOS to compare with.

Hi,

For me the "definitive edition" of MS-DOS is 6.22, 7.0 and 7.1 is also very usable as the back-up boot to DOS version on Win9X systems. Most previous versions are also useable by my perspective depending on the computer it is running on.

The exceptions (These which I don't recommend):
Any 4.x versions, they tried to put multitasking and a GUI into MS-DOS, didn't really work out, just use 3.x or 5.x+ versions if possible on the system.
Any 1.x versions if can be avoided on the HW, as these early versions are very rough around the edges and missing even directory and HDD support.

FreeDOS is OK if you want to avoid proprietary software.

EDIT: The same applies to IBM versions of DOS as MS-DOS because most of the time they were simply slightly modified rebrands of the MS versions.

Lualb wrote on Today, 03:14:

Now my question is: Which DOS would you use to play games and experiment with Windows 3.1x? (Dr-DOS, FreeDOS, Ms-DOS, PC-DOS,SvarDOS, or some other version?) Which is the best?

For the first question, you can use any DOS kernel for games and they don't differ too much from my experience, but for Windows 3.1x (especially 386-Enhanced mode), MS-DOS is the only option.

For the second question, I consider FreeDOS the best, for it's the most modern-aware of all. I do recommend using FreeDOS versions of DOS utilities if possible even with other DOS kernels, as the FreeDOS versions have overcome limitations that other DOS' native versions of the utilities had.

i tend to like win 98 for DOS, and i liked msdos6.22 for very old systems. i did use DR DOS, PC DOS and so on as experiments but in practice whatever advantages they have never resulted in me using them long term

mainstream DOS use lasted from somewhere in the 80's when computers as in "the PC" started to become more prevalent at work and started gaining some slight popularity in the home, then it kinda vanished circa 1995-97.

in terms of sheer numbers DOS (and windows 3.x) remains small in its ubiquity compared to windows 9x and later windows. It remains an interesting but actually comparatively small era in terms of total users. i look back at it fondly and still like MSDOS for direct hardware programming etc

Another FreeDOS fan here. It's just awesome. I setup multi boot with FD/98/XP if the sys is capable of that. On older/smaller machines I use 95OSR2.1 or 98SE only with their integrated DOS 7.x. I never use Win3.x

I drive svardos on my retro machine.

It is able to boot win3.x, and is unencumbered license wise.
It also supports fat32.

Needs a little love, in that the built-in editor is rather anemic, and freedos' defragmenter refuses to run (mainly because the sourcecode for it does a very idiotic check of "Is this freedos? NOPE!? THEN NOPE! NOPE! NOPE!"). I borrowed the "failsafe.drv" version of windows98's defrag for this purpose. It runs just fine.

IBM PC-DOS 2000

Do you encounter compatibility problems running old games on FreeDOS?

I think most people still say MSDOS 6.22 is the most compatible. Feature-wise it might be FreeDos.

I assume we're talking here about DOS options for late-ISA or even PCI-only machines, with HDD much larger than 2 GB.
FAT32 is a must, and in general we want the DOS to be as modern as possible.

For such cases I use DOS 7.10 from Windows 98 SE.
First thing after install is "BootGUI=0" and "Logo=0".
If I want Windows 3.x, then 3XSTART.
I also add a bunch of utilities, eg. DEVLOAD from FreeDOS.

Overall, *not* the most modern version of DOS available.
But it's been there for 27 years already, and widely used.
So, even if there's a problem somewhere, the solution is easy to find...

For pure DOS machines I use 6.22. Even on my 4.77Mhz 8088. Win9x machines obviously come with DOS 7.x.

PC-DOS 7.1, same compatibility MSDOS, FAT32 support even on 286 machines (maybe 8088 but never tested FAT32), very VERY reduced memory needs

Exelent DOS

theelf wrote on Today, 12:58:

PC-DOS 7.1, same compatibility MSDOS, FAT32 support even on 286 machines (maybe 8088 but never tested FAT32), very VERY reduced memory needs

Exelent DOS

Hello, fellow man of culture.

I still mainly use 5 on my DOS systems... I don't use LFNs in DOS (I don't like loading "unnecessary" TSRs and older version of DOS which I still use a lot don't support. You can't even trust LFN->SFN conversion in DosBox... so I tend to avoid.

I "started" with NorthStarDOS which didn't even have extensions (just 8 char name) and never got into typing long names - eg: when testing "high speed parallel transfers" - I would call the file T.C with a first line of: // Test high speed parallel transfers"
when finished I might rename to THPARTRN.C

When I made the ImageDisk boot floppy that I distributed, I used PCDOS7 - at the time MS hand't released DOS free, but IBM included it on their free "Serverguide toolkit"

Never liked FreeDOS much (I do have some tools in it - but some misunderstanding with it's devs ended badly) - and I have run into some compatilility problems - eg: DDLINK bootstrap relied on MS&PC DOS only blocking 0x1A (EOF) when: COPY CON $BOOT$.COM" FreeDos blocks much more and it took a bit of work to figure out how to send the first stage bootloader - and there's no guarantee it things won't change.

I dont use only DOS PC and i like to have FAT32. I usually use DOS that comes with Win9x (Win95B / Win98SE) and both are FAT32.

DR DOS 6.0 is the greatest DOS evarrrrr!!!!111

Mostly because it forced MS to drag MSDOS out of the 1980s and keep their prices sane. Also for a couple of years it was the best way to get a personal LAN going with the netware lite stuff included. That democratised networking a bit. It's fairly useful and has some cool features.

However, I am mostly DOS agnostic, I'll use various versions. I prefer older DOS on older machines, newer DOS on newer machines. Though I kinda go 3.3 on sub 286, 5.0 on 286 to SX, 6.21 on 386DX up.

DaveDDS wrote on Today, 13:02:

Never liked FreeDOS much (I do have some tools in it - but some misunderstanding with it's devs ended badly) - and I have run into some compatilility problems - eg: DDLINK bootstrap relied on MS&PC DOS only blocking 0x1A (EOF) when: COPY CON $BOOT$.COM" FreeDos blocks much more and it took a bit of work to figure out how to send the first stage bootloader - and there's no guarantee it things won't change.

Yeah, if there are such discrepancies between PC/MS-DOS and FreeDOS, then the latter is unacceptable for me.
Whenever a problem arises, you never know whether it's in the hardware, wrong configuration, or some mysterious incompatiblity inside the DOS.

The codebase of MS-DOS 7.10 dates back to the Seattle Computer Products DOS from 1980, so there's pretty much no room for such incompatiblities.
And it's probably the only DOS capable of running the most popular DOS program ever, ie... Windows 9x.