As the forerunner to the graphical user interfaces in Microsoft’s Windows platform, MS-DOS helped set the stage for the company’s dominance in the PC software market. When MS-DOS was released in 1981, ...

Before Microsoft had Office, before it had Windows, it had an operating system called MS DOS. MS DOS was a command-line operating system, meaning you had to memorize a lot of commands and type them ...

Tony Smith puns it up, with “Kudos to QDOS”: On 27 July 1981, Microsoft gave the name MS-DOS to the…operating system it acquired on that day from Seattle Computer Products (SCP). … The company had ...

What comes to mind when you look back at the history of Windows? Is it the iconic logos, the ever-changing Start menus, or maybe the introduction of Live Tiles? The story of Microsoft’s flagship ...

Unlock the full InfoQ experience by logging in! Stay updated with your favorite authors and topics, engage with content, and download exclusive resources. Vivek Yadav, an engineering manager from ...

It might seem like the days of MS-DOS were a lifetime ago because…well, they basically were. Version 6.22 of the venerable operating system, the last standalone release, came out back in 1994. That ...

Without Microsoft, the world of modern computer technology would not be the same as we know it. Next year, Microsoft turns 50 years old, so it’s worth looking back at the megacorporation’s significant ...

In context: Back in 1980, Tim Paterson was creating a new operating system he called QDOS or Quick and Dirty Operating System. The system was later renamed 86-DOS, as it was being designed to run on ...

This could be the tech world’s version of a conviction being overturned by new DNA evidence. A forensic analysis conducted for the latest issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine appears to have answered one ...

Do you still long to run WordPerfect 5.1, Lotus 1-2-3 4, or Doom on DOS? Well, if you do, there's a new way to revisit the PC world of the 1980s: The newly open-sourced PC-MOS/386 v501. PC-MOS, for ...