There's also NightKernel[0]...

"The Night kernel is a 32-bit drop-in replacement for the original 16-bit kernel of the FreeDOS operating system. It uses linear memory addressing and operates in protected mode on the Intel x86 architecture. The typical user will retain compatibility with their DOS applications and gain protected mode abilities such as task switching between applications..."

At it's infancy but you can add RSS[1] to follow the discussion.

[0] https://github.com/mercury0x000d/NightKernel

[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/feed/night-dos-kernel/msgs/r...

More feed options here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!aboutgroup/night-dos-kerne...

actually, it kinda is. FreeDOS has added a lot of nice features over the last few years. http://www.freedos.org/

Wonder if one could get a modern browser going on FreeDOS somehow...

The Arachne browser was last updated in 2013, and its code is freely available - it might make a good starting point: http://www.glennmcc.org/

At this point in time i suspect it would be easier to port webkit over in some form...

Emulation's difficult, even for well-known platforms. Dosbox emulates a large variety of hardware, quirks in various DOS versions, and runs on a ton of platforms, but it doesn't do any of those things absolutely perfectly, and there's room for improvement in its hardware support. Plus, compiler and environmental changes need occasional maintenance.