The "Live in DOS for a Week" Challenge!

7 Days of DOS. As a community. DOS games. DOS productivity. Absolutely glorious.

Within The Lunduke Journal Community, we have talked about doing some sort of community-wide computing challenge. Something highly arbitrary, but highly fun.

And, starting this coming Wednesday (the 14th), our first challenge officially kicks off:

“Live in DOS for a Week”

The idea is simple: try to use DOS (and DOS-based software) for as much of your personal computing as possible for 7 days.

During that time I — and others within the community — will document our progress and share tips, tricks, cool software discoveries, and other observations about what it is like to use DOS in the year 2022.

There will (of course) be exceptions to using DOS — and most people will (for obvious reasons) probably not use DOS for most of their work. Everyone is invited to take part to whatever degree sounds enjoyable to them (some may choose to spend most of their time in DOS… others may simply want to tinker with a few of the applications discussed). It’s all about having fun and learning more about DOS and how it can be enjoyed in the modern age!

More details and parameters are below.

Schedule of Events

• Wednesday, Sep 14 @ 8am Central — The week in DOS kicks off with a podcast here on The Lunduke Journal.

• Wednesday, Sep 14 @ 10am Central — There will be a Founding Member Hangout where folks can discuss the DOS challenge (among other nerdy topics). More details on Founding Member hangouts here.

• During the week — I will be chronicling my DOS usage over on Lunduke.Locals.com. Posting tips, tricks, tutorials, observations, and cool software I use along the way. Others taking part in the DOS challenge are encouraged to post their progress — or ask questions — as well. (Regular articles will continue to be published to The Lunduke Journal, on the typical schedule, during the week.)

• Wednesday, Sep 21 @ 8am Central — The week in DOS officially ends. A follow-up podcast will be posted here discussing how the week went for all of us.

Note: If you are not currently signed up at Lunduke.Locals.com, I highly recommend it. That will be the best place to interact with the community as we all see just how far we can go with using DOS in 2022.

A free account on Lunduke.Locals.com will allow you to read all of the posts I make about DOS over the week (all the tips, tricks, etc.). A full subscription (which many of you already have — and can be obtained as part of the Founding Member or Lifetime subscription, or directly through Locals) is needed to make posts yourself, and to read/write comments. So, at the very least, grab a free account for Lunduke.Locals.com.

Notes / Parameters / “Rules” for the Week in DOS

Again: Rules for this challenge are very loose and flexible. Get as involved as is fun for you!

That said… here are the general parameters for the DOS challenge:

• Use DOS for your personal computing for one week (7 days).

• Does not apply to your work. If you can do your work via DOS, and you want to, go for it (and let us know how you did it). But feel free to use any OS or computer for your work. The goal is to see how much of your non-work stuff can be done via DOS.

• We will all still be using at least some things outside of DOS, even for our personal computing. Including, obviously, both Lunduke.Substack.com and Lunduke.Locals.com.

• I will document how it goes for me, daily, on Lunduke.Locals.com. You are all welcome to do the same. This can include software you found and used, problems you faced, things you weren't able to do, or any other general observations of using DOS full time in 2022.

• You can run DOS via real hardware, emulation, or a combination of both. Whatever is convenient for you. More details on possible options below.

• If you find something doesn’t work in DOS and simply had to revert to Linux/Mac/Windows… talk about it! Maybe others have found workarounds… or there simply may be some things that cannot be done!

• Games are a big part of what many people love about DOS. While many of us will be attempting to use for our personal productivity (and even networking)… there’s no shame in focusing on the games. If you just feel like playing some DOS games and talking about it with us… you’ll be more than welcome!

Is it possible for you to do 25% of your modern computing via DOS? 50%? 100%?! Let’s find out, learn a few things about modern DOS, and have some fun along the way!

Options for running DOS

There are many ways to run DOS… and many versions of DOS to run. Below are a small handful of options you may choose to use.

• DOSBox or DOSBox-x — An emulator focused on supporting DOS games. While it’s not a “full DOS installation” in the traditional sense, it may be enough for many!

• FreeDOS — Modern and open source and MS-DOS compatible. Runs great on hardware and in virtual machines. Includes software installation “package managers” and lots of utilities (including networking). I expect many will go this route.

• MS-DOS — The traditional option. Lots of versions available.

• Other DOS systems — Including DR-DOS, PC-DOS, Wendin-DOS, and so many others. Lots of options!

And, of course, you can run DOS in an emulator (such as VirtualBox, VMWare, QEMU, or others) or on “bare metal” hardware.

I, personally, will likely be using a combination of both emulation/virtualization and running on bare metal. A Linux laptop with a full screen emulator running DOS makes for a pretty great DOS laptop!

My current plan is too do as much of my computing via DOS as possible… and, where I can’t use DOS, I plan to revert to using my smartphone to fill in the gaps (including interacting with both to Substack and Locals).

We’ll see how that approach goes! Heck! I might change it up as the week progresses and I see how others are doing things in DOS!

There’s really no wrong way to go!

Remember… this is low stress and for fun! You can spend a few minutes dabbling with some of the cool DOS software we mention… or you can dive in, head first, and use DOS for everything you do. All week long.

Or you can simply laugh at all of us trying to make things work in DOS while you enjoy the comforts of your modern OS. ;)

No matter how you choose to take part, hope you can join in the fun!

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