Disk operating system

lastmod 2020-07-02created 2020-07-021 edits

A disk operating system (DOS) is a type of disk operating system, a program that performs commands such as reading from and writing to disks. It is command-line based, with commands typed in directly.

From 1981 to 1995, and until 2000 if partially MS-DOS-based Microsoft Windows (95, 98, Me) is included, MS-DOS dominated the IBM PC compatible market. DOS is a family of similar command-line systems including MS-DOS, PC DOS, DR-DOS, FreeDOS, ROM-DOS, and PTS-DOS.

None of these systems were simply called "DOS" (the name was used only for an unrelated IBM mainframe operating system in the 1960s). Numerous unrelated non-x86 microcomputer disk operating systems used the name "DOS" as is, and people often simply said "DOS" when discussing the computers that used them. (AmigaDOS, AMSDOS, Apple DOS, Atari DOS, Commodore DOS, CSI-DOS, ProDOS, TRSDOS)

See also

• Operating system (OS)

Favorite site

• Wikipedia (en) Disk operating system (concept)
• Wikipedia (en) DOS (product family)