From: Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com>
Hi, On Sun, Dec 18, 2016 at 12:23 AM, Mingcong Bai <jeffbaich...@gmail.com> wrote: > oL? 2016o||12uLe17uuN 21:21, Rugxulo oaOoUo: >> >> On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 2:55 PM, Mingcong Bai <jeffbaich...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> But FreeDOS seemed to have CD installation only... Is it possible to >>> install FreeDOS with a set of floppy disks still? If not, what are my >>> options? >> You mean that old bunch of like 88 floppy images for full FD 1.0?? Uh, >> no, that hasn't been attempted this time, probably overkill. > > I must admit that I had no idea how complete a suite of FreeDOS is... > That makes sense. Most of that bloat wasn't FreeDOS proper, just third-party games and tools. Most of that is still mirrored on iBiblio.org under /pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/ (if you still want it later). >> Truly, you don't always absolutely need all the extras (networking, >> games, archivers, development). > > Okay... After the installation then would be a lot of playing with > floppy disks. Unavoidable if you don't have other ways of getting the files. But it's not as bad as it sounds. Certainly you can grab some useful stuff in well under ten floppies. >> In other words, such CJK languages probably need their own TSRs or >> tools in order to use graphics mode (instead of limited text mode). >> There is however no active support (AFAIK) in FreeDOS for any CJK. > > That's exactly how it worked for MS-DOS, when I read about some > information on the FreeDOS Wikipedia page regarding > "internationalization" I thought FreeDOS already had Unicode display > support. Oh well... I will try and get in touch with someone soon. No explicit Unicode or CJK support, no, sorry. The tools I mentioned (and good old-fashioned codepages for non-CJK) are all we've got for the foreseeable future. > Thanks for all your answers though, just a couple more questions... > > - I have just managed to find a Disney Sound Source on eBay, how > compatible is FreeDOS with MS-DOS drivers? I hope it would work on > FreeDOS... Sound is the weakest link in DOS, esp. since (as Eric said) it's usually bundled with the games themselves. So there is some partial support in some few third-party commercial games for such a card, but it's far from universal "DOS support". DOS does sometimes have system drivers (.SYS), and most of those should work with FreeDOS unchanged, if you need it, but overall sound support is just not a strong suit. There is no intentional incompatibility here, but a few bugs may still linger in some dark corners. > - How does "version upgrade" work for FreeDOS? Do I have to overwrite my > installation every time, or is there update/upgrade mechanism built it? Jerome's installer does some work behind the scenes, but overall there is no good way to auto-upgrade DOS itself. You'll normally still have to copy things manually (and delete / reinstall other pieces, if desired). There is no intention to literally automate everything. You're still expected to be willing to heavily fiddle with it yourself. Mateusz's package manager was already mentioned, but there's not a lot of work done (yet) to build such updated packages, so you don't have much to upgrade yet anyways. Overall, FreeDOS is fairly stable and not undergoing drastic changes, so while a lot of little things have indeed changed over the years, the major infrastructure hasn't been incompatibly broken or rewritten. Dreams for a 64-bit SMP multitasking Unicode version are not realistic. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user --- Internet Rex 2.29 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (1:2320/105.99) --- * BgNet 1.0b12 = CCO * KY/US * 502/875-8938 * capcity2.synchro.net --- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3 * Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
