Hi CHarles, > 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.
Big install base and DOS? Sounds unlikely now that even street signs run Windows XP as I recently noticed when one showed an error popup. So even for semi-embedded things, people just go for whatever comes with their computer now instead of something optimized for the task. On the other hand, how about a big COMPILER? For example GNU C, for which Linux, Windows and DOS versions exist. The latter is DJGPP and of course it supports the full 32 bit memory space and registers :-) If you want something with a large install base, it should not matter which Linux distro or Windows version people run exactly, as many do have their pros and cons but ultimately the users either pick one to their taste or they simply only know the one they have. So as long as you can compile for it, it should be fine. And given your interest in DOS, your software does not seem to need lots of fancy libraries that could differ between platforms. If you do need a GUI at all, you can use some portable library like FLTK for that, which has a DOS version. For a free system like DOS and Linux you could also say that because you can make a boot disk / CD / DVD / BD / stick with it to run your special software, they have a big install base by POTENTIAL. However, that only works out if people are willing to boot their computer to run exclusively your software. In particular if your boot disk does not include "fun and productivity" apps as well which they could use while your special software is crunching numbers in the background. Cheers, Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book "Graph Databases" is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their applications. Written by three acclaimed leaders in the field, this first edition is now available. Download your free book today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/NeoTech _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
