This has not been so easy to determine. Currently what I have read suggests this is possible, but I don’t have a definitive guide or answer. Naturally I would only give FreeDOS a relatively small partition of maybe 1GB or 2GB max.
I first discovered a guide how to install Free DOS on a Mac GPT on a user’s blog: Random Computer Bits: Tutorial: installing FreeDOS on a (Intel) Mac … which gave me confidence that if FreeDos can install on a Mac, then this could also be true for GNU/Linux.
Then I discovered another web url noting it possible to put FreeDOS on a GPT partition: Re: "freedos" Command HowTo? where they noted in a June-2012 post:
And more good news for both volunatry and forced GPT users! By doing a plain MBR/GPT hybrid (using partition table entries in the GPT’s protective MBR, which is normally a “dummy” MBR), you can boot FreeDOS off a GPT hard disk with Grub easily. FreeDOS will boot if you have only one protective (type 00xEE) partition entry (which usually means part of the drive is left unprotected), as well as if there are more than one protective entries.
The good news is that hybrid MBR/GPT setups can rapidly and easily be done and undone with gdisk. In my experience, Windows can’t handle hybrid MBR/GPT drives. If you have Linux installed on the hybrid drive, and gdisk installed in that installation of Linux, you can make a new protective MBR very quickly, then reboot into Windows and use the drive in Windows. Then when you want to boot DOS off the drive, you can boot into Linux, make the hybrid, then reboot into DOS. Also, Grub has a gptsync command that can deal with some of this stuff, but so far I am unfamiliar with it (I think that will change).
I tried creating an EF01 partition in a GPT schemed disk and treating that one partition as an entire MBR-schemed hard drive, and installed FreeDOS into it as such. My intent was to chainload Grub4DOS or something from Grub, and from that second bootloader create a new drivemapping allowing DOS to use that partition as though it were an entire hard drive. The incentive for this method is to be clean of any hybrid MBR/GPT setups.
Burg seemed promising for the above task, but I couldn’t get it to compile. Grub4DOS is GPT-unaware so I had to use a hybrid MBR/GPT with it anyways, but, turns out, I couldn’t even get Grub4DOS to make a drivemapping for the partition.
But the hybrid MBR/GPT method works well, especially if you keep the hybrid part of it temporary and only throw the entry in when you want to boot DOS, and then remember to put it back to a plain protective MBR afterwards.
I can’t say that I understand all of the above first. … I don’t know what is meant by an MBR/GPT setup (ie some sort of mix of the two), nor am I familiar with many of the other aspects noted. But this does give me confidence it may be doable and possibly its just a matter of finding a good guide.
Again, I’m contemplating creating a second (new) thread to cover some of my hard drive questions (wrt GPT) in a new PC.