FreeVMS is an OpenVMS-like operating system which can run on several architectures like i386, PPC, Alpha, and many others.

FreeVMS consists of a POSIX kernel and a DCL command line interpreter. The only architecture currently supported is i386.

Here are some key features of "FreeVMS":

Supported hardware configuration

· PCs (i386s)
· Console: VGA
· Network interfaces: ne2k and 3c900 (3c905/3c590 might work, untested)
· Disk interface: IDE

Core kernel features

· Control mechanisms: software interrupts, ASTs
· Synchronization: event flags, locks
· Scheduling, time support, process control and communication
· Memory management: working set list, swapper, pools
· Input/output: QIO, mailboxes, terminal driver
· Image support: VMS images and ELF
· Miscellaneous: logical names

Filesystems

· RMS read/write SEQ (yes) IDX (too little to be usable)
· RMS can be run on both ODS-2 and ext2 (but less functionality on ext2)
· ODS-2 read/write/execute
· ODS-2 initialize
· ODS-2 can have bootable kernel
· ODS-5 readonly
· DFU doing analyze/disk
· XPQ (for ODS-2, and something like it for ext2)

Bootloader

· GRUB with ODS-2 support to boot kernel

Clustering

· SCA/SCS-ish protocols
· Configure process
· CWPS (forcex/stop only)
· MSCP (does not currently work due to lost network packets)

Networking

· CMUIP (with only incoming telnetd)

Shell

· DCL
· mcr, run
· simple @ scripts
· basis CLD and CLI$ support
· simple symbol support
· DCL builtin
· define, goto, logout, stop, exit
· set default/prompt/process
· show default/time
· DCL utilities
· copy, delete, directory, edt, init, mount, search, type
· create /name_table
· set working_set
· show device/system/logical/working_set

Editor

· EDT (from Ozone, and can not yet be used fully)

Programming language

· Bliss (not directly used, and is under development)

Linker

· LINKER (simple, static images. Can do some dynamic linking.)

RTL

· STR$
· LIB$

What's New in This Release:

· Better and more command line qualifier handling is available.
· The possibility to set and show identifier ACL was added.
· No bugs have been fixed. SMP problems still remain.
· The outgoing telnet client has problems withing CLI parsing and output.
· Only the i386 disk image has been tested.