HP's FreeDOS Surprise: A Three-Layered OS Mystery

A user's recent purchase of an HP ZBook laptop with FreeDOS revealed a curious three-layered operating system setup. Boot times were unusually long, with fleeting glimpses of what appeared to be Linux kernel messages before FreeDOS loaded. Investigation uncovered a Debian 9 Linux base running a virtual machine that, in turn, hosted two identical FreeDOS installations. One of the FreeDOS instances was actually an ancient Debian 6.0.3 setup, configured as a rudimentary web kiosk. This convoluted and outdated FreeDOS implementation highlights potential issues with HP's hardware and software compatibility updates.