Thanks for the info. I'm still hunting for the "right" OS for some of my projects. Looked at BSD a few years back. Seemed OK except there wasn't a lot of apps and they didn't support a lot of hardware coming out at the time. Something FreeDos is working hard to address.
The big problem for me as an app developer in bioinformatics is finding an OS worth investing in. For the time being I'm using Win XP SP3, but not really happy with the choice. I need something fairly mainstream so potential users will be able to easily download and try it out. You also want to target as big an installed base as possible. Then when and IF it takes off you can look at porting to other OSs and platforms. I know the industry tends to favor LINUX now, but Windows is second in the running. I don't like LINUX for a lot of reasons I won't go into here. Mostly because except for Ubuntu 8 most of the distros have their glitches and problems or are optimized for something else. I picked Windows because market pressure forces them to iron out the glitches eventually and its not going to disappear anytime soon. I also notice my doctor used a Windows laptop for the work in his office. looking at X-Rays, test results etc. I think despite lagging behind Windows, will likely be favored by endusers in the biomedical industry. Its all tough choices you have to make carefully as an app developer in a fairly niche market. At least we have some choices to make and MS hasn't totally dominated the industry. So I do appreciate efforts like LINUX and FreeDos even though I'm not currently using either. CB On 4/10/14, Wesley Parish <wes.par...@paradise.net.nz> wrote: > FWIW, I think one niche is allowing tech-oriented youngsters the opportunity > to > rediscover the agony and ecstasy of finally getting a balky DOS application > to > run in the allotted RAM: one of my nephews showed me, with much pride, that > he > had finally got a free DOS clone running in an emulator on his iPhone, and > was > running Win95 on top of that. > > I was duly impressed, though I was not surprised, since iOS is a > FreeBSD-based OS. > > Now that most of DOS apps can be described as legacy code apart from a few > here > and there still writing for DOS, FreeDOS is not only a guilt-free > alternative to > MS-DOS, it's also a good training ground for writing small-scale apps and > OSes. > Every University with an intelligent Computer Science dept., should expect > third-year students to write an application or utility that will run on > FreeDOS > or RxDOS, just to get them thinking of cutting memory footprint: because > there's > a whole lot of embedded environments out there, and training Java and C# > does > not train anyone to handle memory constraints very well - if at all. > > Just my 0.02c > > Wesley Parish > > Quoting Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com>: > >> Hi, >> >> On Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 4:04 PM, Charles Belhumeur >> <chbelhumeur2...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > >> > I'm thinking more and more there's no big niche for FreeDos. >> >> The niche is running legacy software from ye olde days (or similar). >> >> > Too many problems trying to get it to do the tasks people >> > want to do on their boxes these days, surf the web, play media and >> > games. It all takes sophisticated hardware and Intel chips in real >> > mode just aren't good with the new hardware. >> > >> > I think the mistake LINUX and Windows make these days is loading >> every >> > damn driver on the hard drive at boot time and all these other >> > processes like clipboards, print spoolers, caches etc. Then wankers >> > who write apps with background update processes and the like. >> >> In fairness, I think FreeBSD can customize most things like that in >> /etc/rc.conf (or whatever). It's got a relatively small footprint and >> doesn't even come with X11 (installed) by default. Though I haven't >> tried 10.0 yet. (FYI, I don't think DOSEMU works there anymore, dunno, >> but BOCHS or similar should be supported via ports.) >> >> > Were I to design an OS these days I'd likely go with a 32 or 64 bit >> > version of a DOS or VAX like OS and design it from the start to be >> > configurable for different tasks. Keep it simple and load only what's >> > needed with better integration of the pieces. >> > >> > It all boils down to this What do people want to do with their boxes? >> > Will this OS make it easier simpler for them to do it? >> >> A year ago, you humorously said, "I always point out Einstein to the >> wankers." And I mentioned Oberon. Well, let me quote from Wirth's >> latest report: >> >> http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/Oberon/Oberon07.Report.pdf >> >> " >> The Programming Language Oberon >> Revision 1.10.2013 / 10.3.2014 >> Niklaus Wirth >> Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler. (A. Einstein) >> " >> >> And the reason I mention this is because he just turned 80, and yet he >> still updated his _Project Oberon_ book (OS + compiler) to use Xilinx >> Spartan-3 FPGA with his own custom "RISC" processor. >> >> http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ProjectOberon/index.html >> >> Since you like simplicity, you'll probably like looking at that >> (though I admit to not having tried it myself yet, though I see >> there's a third-party RISC emulator for running atop Windows now). >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------- >> --------------- >> Put Bad Developers to Shame >> Dominate Development with Jenkins Continuous Integration >> Continuously Automate Build, Test & Deployment >> Start a new project now. 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