Low end *nix apps could be ported in place of over dos apps hell we could just make a Linux distro and slap a freedos sticker on it lol.
Problem is there are two arguments here.. why and why not. If you build it they will come. If you don't then be happy carrying your xt's on your back. On 06/06/2015 8:19 am, "Eric Auer" <e.a...@jpberlin.de> wrote: > > Hi! > > > A port of DOS to ARM would not be bound to any existing API and would not > > need to be compatible with any existing DOS implementations, while still > > being a port of DOS. > > Well we already HAD a port to another CPU in the early times of > FreeDOS: After all, it acts a bit like a library with an API on > one side and invocations of the BIOS on another side. I have no > clue what sort of BIOS you can expect from common ARM computers > and whether they have a BIOS at all - probably no, just a boot > loader and lots of information for making your own drivers? > > In any case, the main problem is: Which apps will run on your > ported DOS? With the other port, the answer was "very few and > you had to port them from open source DOS apps yourself", but > at least porting was easy for apps which avoided direct calls > to the BIOS and direct hardware access. > > If you port to ARM, you will probably have to compete with Linux > because Linux already runs on ARM and many apps have already > been ported to various ARM versions of Linux. The advantage of > DOS, as usual, will be a low memory and disk footprint, while > it will lack built-in network, multi-threading, multi-tasking > and memory management support. Only for some of those, library > solutions for DOS are available (in particular the first and > last item on the list) but those libraries are very specific > to PC hardware and will be quite hard to port to DOS. If you > want built-in support, you still have to provide the function > in your ARM-DOS in some other way. > > There also are a number of hobby operating system where people > thought "well, I could make an OS from scratch, then it will > have all the API that I want without all the overhead of any > larger OS, plus I like challenges". Almost all such OS have > exciting but one-person histories and barely any apps for them. > Still, they probably are worth the excitement for the author. > > Cheers, Eric > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-devel mailing list > Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel >
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