How about something very radical - cutting FreeDOS back to the bare operating system, and just offering the other software as user-installed downloads as it was originally packaged?
In ye olde days people purchased DOS, installed it, and then installed their own software using the original installer and documentation. Even today when I install DOS or FreeDOS I do a minimal install and then add the software that I want myself, using zip files or sometimes even the original installation diskettes. (Virtualized if I'm on a VM.) FreeDOS is trying to be very ambitious by packaging and offering a lot of 3rd party software, but all of this software has its own look and feel and most of it was not designed to be installed by an unified package installer. That's a lot of extra work, more complexity, and in some cases a bewildering amount of choice for people who are installing it. And it looks like a hodgepodge of unrelated software in the end. Look at the NET package for example; there are 31 packages there. Some are just packet drivers. We're offering two different SNTP clients, at least two different PING programs, several different browsers, and lots of other duplication. It's a mess. FreeDOS really should either pick the best and try to offer a coherent experience with that, or really just leave it to the user to choose and not try to repackage anything. Instead of repackaging 3rd party software to work with a FreeDOS package installer, how about just running a curated repository of open source DOS software? That is effectively what is happening anyway, just with the extra complexity of the repackaging. Mike
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