I never intended to start a WAR over Arachne and coming up with a Windows replacement.
I would like to see Arachne, because it's graphical and there are no filter plugins for it, moved from the Freedos ditribution to say an extras respository. I can't install procon:latte to Arachne, which is an over effective filter for Firefox 2.x and later. Lynx isn't a problem because it isn't graphical where there might be a desire to support reading simple text web pages that are local to the Freedos machine. MS DOS was never networked out of the box where Freedos to be like it should not be either. All of the network programs, except lynx, can be put into an extra repository that can be distributed on a separate CD. As far as a Windows replacement, a couple of comments: Dos based Windows is not necessary to support all of the programs I listed, W3D and Blake Stone work if you have a new enough version of them, but it is needed to support some. If Dos based Windows is used, Freedos is possibly being run on a computer that has 128+ megs of RAM. There are a LOT of old computers that have this much RAM. Even more if you include 486s with 64 megs of RAM. A Pentium III 450 can certainly run XP, but I don't recommend that. Making a list of what is lost if you don't have Dos based Windows is not a bad idea. People think of Dos, Windows has been popular since at least MS-DOS 3.3 where few programs were written when Windows was popular to run in straight Dos. A Windows replacement does not necessarily need to be Windows compatible. Opengem is technically a Windows replacement, it just isn't one that replaces say the web browsers that people typically ran in Windows 98. MS Dos existed all the way up to the Pentium which typically had 128 megs of RAM or more. That 128 meg Pentium is your typical Windows 98 machine. Freedos can ask, "Are you on a Pentium, 486, 386, 286, or 8088," at install time. Based off of that info, it is possible to decide whether or not certain programs like Firefox for example make any sense. I seriously doubt that anyone wants to run Arachne on anything less than a 486 with at least 2 megs of RAM for example. If I am not mistaken, Freedos is being designed to work on everything from yesterday's computer to today's multi core 64 bit system. Why not? If Freedos is being run natively on a multi core computer, running a GUI that can support Firefox when there is more than a GIG of RAM to work with seems like no big deal. Certainly on a computer like that one can reboot to Linux or relegate Freedos to an emulated environment, but it would be nice if you didn't have to do that. A version of Linux that installs to a FAT directory and exits to Freedos when you are done would be fine. There is such a thing as the UMSDOS file system which Linux can be installed to, though I don't know of any modern Linux distributions that install this way. A Windows replacement that is Windows compatible is certainly a separate project. I have always been curious why the FreeWin95 project failed. A project to build a GUI that will run Firefox which can sit on top of Freedos might be simpler than a project to clone Windows 9x in entirety. In short, the state of Freedos's Arachne poses a security problem for anyone who needs to make sure that a graphical web browser has a local filter on it. Sure you might filter at the router to the Net, but that isn't always the case. On Sat, 2009-06-20 at 08:20 -0700, Jack wrote: > To all involved in the recent "Arachne" and "Windows" threads: > > Look, you guys! We need "peace and quiet" on this and on all > DOS forums, if DOS is to survive! Take it from a 63-year-old > who has been in more than my own share of "wars", like many of > you know, and which I regret for the damage to DOS they did. > > DOS is dying. Some may say no, but I "sense" it is used much > less than before, in part due to all the arguments on this and > other forums among people who still do use DOS. My goal now, > for UIDE and all my drivers, is to make them the best possible > so DOS will SURVIVE! To this end, (A) they are again offered > to all, (B) their sources are again available, and (C) I shall > work with anybody and EVERYBODY to make them better! > > Japheth helped me speed-up UIDE in "protected mode" and I sent > him a "stripped" UIDEJR he can use to upgrade XDMA32/XCDROM32. > He is busy with JWASM, but if he ever updates his JLM drivers, > [for which I am NOT expert-enough in "protected mode"], I will > help him all I can! Bernd Blaauw wanted changes to UIDE that > help his automatic "scripts", and he got them! I am changing > RDISK from a .SYS to a .COM file, which will then allow a user > specified drive letter when loaded thru the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. > [Not possible in CONFIG.SYS, a "long story" why!]. Anything > else I can think of, I will do! > > If I can do all that, so can all of you. Let's end the WARS, > and do our best to keep ALL versions of DOS alive! > > Jack R. Ellis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Are you an open source citizen? Join us for the Open Source Bridge conference! Portland, OR, June 17-19. Two days of sessions, one day of unconference: $250. Need another reason to go? 24-hour hacker lounge. Register today! http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;215844324;13503038;v?http://opensourcebridge.org _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
