thumb|The boot screen and command-line interface of MS-DOS 6, with an example of its directory structure thumb|The boot screen and command-line interface of FreeDOS, showing version information and an example of its directory structure
AI overview
DOS (Disk Operating System) is an older computer operating system that used a text-based command line instead of graphical windows, and it was the standard system for personal computers in the 1980s and early 1990s. It matters historically because it was foundational to personal computing, and versions like MS-DOS became widely used before graphical systems like Windows took over.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Article
21 sectionsContents
- History
- Origins
- Decline
- Continued use
- Embedded systems
- Emulation
- Design
- Boot sequence
- File system
- Drive naming scheme
- Reserved device names
- Memory management
- DOS under OS/2 and Windows
- User interface
- Terminate and stay resident
- Software
- Development tools
- See also
- References
- Further reading
- External links
thumb|The boot screen and command-line interface of MS-DOS 6, with an example of its directory structure thumb|The boot screen and command-line interface of FreeDOS, showing version information and an example of its directory structure
DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. It primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later, compatible systems from other manufacturers are DR-DOS (1988), ROM-DOS (1989), PTS-DOS (1993), and FreeDOS (1994). MS-DOS dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995.