[Freedos-user] Booting FreeDOS from floppy

[Jose Antonio Senna]

 While it is no longer of use in the present case, I would like to add
that I have a small (~2k) utility to write the boot sector on a floppy, and
have used it for some 4-5 years. It is quite crude, as I wrote it for my use 
only but, if is anyone is interested, I may attach it to an e-mail.
Regards
Jose A. Senna






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Re: [Freedos-user] boot floppy disk image too big for a disk

[Rugxulo]

Hi, Eric,

This reply may be pointless, but I'm sure you understand where I'm
coming from. In no way am I pretending that MS-DOS is technically
superior or preferred. The weakest claim is only that it is "probably"
more compatible (which is unavoidable since it's the original). It is
dead and should normally be hard to find, but hey, the OP already had
a copy, so 

On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 4:34 PM, Eric Auer  wrote:
>
>> If you already have the original gold standard of DOSes, i.e. MS-DOS
>> (which was widely tested and hugely popular, by far the most
>> ubiquitous DOS), then you don't urgently "need" any other DOS
>> clone at all all, period.
>
> Being the most widely used does not equal being the best.
> Similarily, FreeDOS gives you a lot of DOS, a lot newer
> than the early 1990s Microsoft version, often in a much
> smaller package both in terms of disk space and in terms
> of the amount of RAM needed. And newer drivers :-)
>
> On the other hand, all DOS clones have to be extremely
> similar to MS DOS when it comes to supporting software
> apps for DOS. Because if you first have to port your
> XYZ app for Linux to "the cool new OS ABC" which also
> behaves a bit like DOS, then most users would simply
> use XYZ directly in Linux and not care about DOS. But
> as FreeDOS and other clones basically run ALL the good
> old software for DOS, clones are clearly attractive.
>
> A reason to use FreeDOS in spite of already having MS DOS:
>
> Your new hardware has bad support from MS DOS and you want
> to have more RAM free and a few new drivers. Of course you
> are free to achieve that by MIXING the best files from both
> versions of DOS, as you already owned MS DOS in my example.

I'm not a salesman. The OP already had MS-DOS, so it's very hard to
sell somebody a clone of what they already have. I don't even use or
recommend MS-DOS (or DR-DOS) anymore, only FreeDOS. For sure, FreeDOS
is "free"-r, much easier to use, study, modify, and redistribute. Yes,
you can still barely find MS-DOS somewhere else (legally), but it's
harder than it used to be.

Userland is not a "unique" advantage because most DOS developers these
days share tools and drivers. The kernel itself just doesn't have all
the bang/whiz/pop/flash new-fangled cpu features that users blindly
expect when a "new" version of "DOS" is released in 2017. Again, I'm
not a salesman, nor a kernel dev, so as an end user I have a hard time
pretending that FreeDOS is a bajillion times more advanced in the
kernel than the other DOSes. AFAIK, it does the same boring ol' stuff
and nothing extra fancy, providing no extra APIs, utilizing no
advanced cpu features. I just can't brag too hard when the
improvements are minor. Most of the enhancements over MS-DOS (etc) are
banal: freedom, better tools, community, etc.

So, again, FreeDOS works great, but it's a hard sell to someone else,
especially if they already have the original.

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