I am a bit fuzzy on the details, but I think I recall Microsoft charging OEMs for selling devices without an OS installed. So some vendors have gotten into the habit of selling devices with FreeDOS preinstalled.
One of my laptops came with FreeDOS preinstalled, and it was about € 50,- cheaper than the version with Windows. Being a Linux person, I gladly took the discount.
I did run into a use case where FreeDOS was insufficient, though - in my last job, our automation people were maintaining an industrial plant whose SCADA software ran on DOS. I have no clue what they did, but apparently it would only run well on MS-DOS. One of our engineers suspected that timing issues regarding the serial port played a role, but in the end, we never found out. I installed MS-DOS 6.22 on two machines, and that was the end of it.
I got a kick out of it, though. Imagine installing an early 1990s OS on late 1990s hardware in ~2016.
One of my laptops came with FreeDOS preinstalled, and it was about € 50,- cheaper than the version with Windows. Being a Linux person, I gladly took the discount.
I did run into a use case where FreeDOS was insufficient, though - in my last job, our automation people were maintaining an industrial plant whose SCADA software ran on DOS. I have no clue what they did, but apparently it would only run well on MS-DOS. One of our engineers suspected that timing issues regarding the serial port played a role, but in the end, we never found out. I installed MS-DOS 6.22 on two machines, and that was the end of it.
I got a kick out of it, though. Imagine installing an early 1990s OS on late 1990s hardware in ~2016.