Hi Blair, > This will probably be the final testing release. As usual, you can > find the variety of ISOs at > www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.0-Testing
I miss an ISO below 100 MB size which includes a livecd: For example the "base with sources" would be a good choice. I also miss a README (who should download which file?), and a "FULL WITHOUT SOURCES" ISO image. It takes more than 8 hours to download the full WITH sources ISO through ISDN (and from ibiblio in general, as they use bandwidth/traffic shaping), so an alternative download without sources would be important. AND only very few people want ALL sources, so we can free the internet from a lot of bandwidth wasting by providing an ISO with all packages but without sources. > XCDROM has been slightly modified as I wondered if increasing the > timeouts would help Eric's CRC errors. Also, the default device is > now FDCD0001 to avoid filesystem conflicts. My suggestion was to make that CDRCACH0 - the old ISO had connected both XCDROM and CDRCACHE to drive letters, creating duplicate drive letters, in the config / autoexec on harddisk. Talking about those files: It is REALLY annoying that the installer overwrote my old config sys. And many DOS users will not find "autoexec" when it is "fdos/fdauto", so there should be a note about that in config sys. > The full livecd portion was removed from fdbasecd.iso and fdbasews.iso > to make them smaller downloads for those with slower internet > connections. See above. > FreeCOM now supports a cool IMHO SET /E extension. Less cool but also useful: FreeCOM now has fewer bugs, CALLVER got updated, EDIT got updated... The kernel did not yet get updated - if you have the "files feel truncated on FAT32" problem, then you would need my "fputlong / fgetlong should involve & LONG_LAST_CLUSTER" patch to enforce 28bit handling of FAT32. Because the bug is triggered when you have nonzero values in the reserved high 4bits in your FAT. I hope DISPLAY also got updated to fix the "crash if no XMS driver present" bug? Did FDAPM and MORESYS get added to the default autoexec / config? Did EMM386 and HIMEM get updated? Is DOS=HIGH,UMB now no longer boot menu option dependent (it is better to have it always on and let the kernel decide automatically when to use it)? Is the default environment size now smaller than the extremely large 4kB of the previous ISO? I think I never needed more than 1kB! Did SHSUCDHD get "rem"oved from the default autoexec? Did the maximum cache size get reduced from 30 to 15 MB, which helps to save DOS memory - caches should not be too big? Does the livecd now feature the MKEYB keyboard driver? As said, now the only ISO which contains the livecd is too big for me to download, so I cannot test any more... > GRUB4DOS is no longer installed as the default bootloader for > FAT32 drives, but is still included. So it is no longer installed by default at all? Very good :-). If people have problems with SYS installing a non-working boot sector for them (in particular on FAT32), please contact me. That bug, if still existing, should be fixed before 1.0... > XFdisk now really can be run from the fdisk menu (bugfix)... You said that the "if no MBR 55aa found, replace ALL code and partition data in the MBR with an empty MBR" function in FDISK, which has caused a lot of data loss in the past, would be necessary to handle wiped / new / virtual harddisks properly. Who would like to help me to find a better solution, for example using his virtual computer? I think it should be enough to do "FDISK /MBR" manually - it should NEVER be the case that FDISK automatically kills my MBR. One could add an option "FDISK /MBR-and-wipe-all-partitioning-data", too. > for those of you who had problems with fdisk, XFdisk should > probably be a good choice. Will it be the default? > All (both) timeouts were increased to 60 seconds due to popular > demand... Why not infinitely long? > It is now possible to install to a different directory than C:\FDOS, > but some files are still installed to C: (and C: is the drive that is > sys'd). There was popular demand for NOT doing that. Just let the user select ANY drive for "SYS" and "config sys", and select any directory for the %DOSDIR%. The user should only get a message like "if you SYS another drive as C:, you will have to add DOS to your boot menu" - which is exactly what most users who want to SYS another drive want to do! I hope you enjoyed being covered with questions again :-) Thanks for the new ISOs! Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys -- and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
