No they don't. They could just start the debian distro without network configuration and gui and end up with a shell, with a MOTD saying this is just a base distro and a full reinstall to a supported OS is advised before connecting it to a network.
I guess they only do that because the FreeDOS name does not frighten the average tech guy who only used microsoft products as much as linux.
but the Linux they are shipping underneath that FreeDOS also works. And they also offer Linux preinstalled, so they need to "support" that to whatever amount anyways.
They probably only support the FreeDOS, not the underlying distribution. If you mess with the Linux and break the FreeDOS, that's on you. They might have 2 customers running some 40 year old legacy DOS app but 99% of people selecting the FreeDOS option are wiping it to install something else, so using it unsupported.
The pre-installed Linux works, but it doesn't have to work for all the driver and functionality edge cases that a real FreeDOS machine would definitely not support.
According to the article, they already do have a Linux option.
I’d wager the FreeDOS is a legacy option because they’ve supported it in the past an figures have shown it sells. Even if those figures don’t take into account how many of those legacy FreeDOS installs were for other alternative OS like Linux (though it could also be BSD, Haiku, Illumos, ReactOS or others).
Or there genuinely might still be FreeDOS users out there. Eg running industrial applications. Though I’d wager they’d be more likely to run DosBox and not on laptops either. But “industrial applications” covers such a wide spectrum of uses so never say never.
Many industrial users are not price sensitive. Having the keyboard, monitor, and computer in a single housing with a built-in UPS all in a compact device with a single power cord is a big selling point.
That's not a universal truth. I've worked with plenty who are.
> Having the keyboard, monitor, and computer in a single housing with a built-in UPS all in a compact device with a single power cord is a big selling point.
That's not a universal truth either. Sometimes the device will be a headless controller. In which case a laptop wouldn't always the right form factor. There might be additional hardware that needs supporting, which can be much more complicated with laptops. There might be other requirements (eg environmental constraints) too.
"Industrial" covers a pretty large spectrum of use cases.
But if you use DOS still for industrial stuff you usually do it because you need some old-fashioned interface (i.e. real serial or parallel ports are the usual example). Which is going to work great from inside a VM, not.
Having worked in this world, I have sometimes patched DOSBox to communicate with all types of extravagant hardware, even ISA cards (look hard enough and you'll find even Core motherboards with ISA slots...).
Recipients of Linux machines might expect them to perform all their functions well, whereas there is no such expectation with FreeDOS.
So while they offer Ubuntu on a limited set of machines, perhaps this emulated approach allows them to effortlessly ship neither-Windows-nor-Ubuntu option to everyone to guide their development/marketing effort (learn if people are happy with Ubuntu/Windows options).
I dual-boot in my computers, because for some things live video games (and some software) I prefer Windows, while for coding or using a remote console I prefer Ubuntu. So I always try to split the hard disk in half and install Ubuntu in raw hardware.
My (relatively new) HP Spectre x360 only got sound working until Ubuntu 22.04 was launched. This is one year after the hardware was launched. I spent some months using Ubuntu without having sound, unless I plugged my USB headphones.
My previous laptop, Dell Inspiron 7375 with an AMD Ryzen 5 2500U CPU, did not even properly boot into Linux until Ubuntu 22.04 was launched. The best I could manage was make it boot it with some MMU kernel parameter, and it worked for half an hour until it froze. And it always froze with Ubuntu 18.04. It is a computer from 2018, so it was four years without me being able to natively run Linux in it. I had to use a virtual machine during these years =(
So, there's a lot of work either by the community or by the vendor to make Linux work in some hardware.
They sell this laptop with Linux too already. And the equivalent of a FreeDOS setup doesn't even need anything complicated - I doubt FreeDOS ships with sound or graphics drivers after all.
