On Mon, 2013-04-15 at 19:57 -0700, turtleman wrote: > Hello, I am new to freeDOS, but I find the project very interesting. However, > upon doing research of DOS applications I found that there are almost no > desktop GUIs being developed. It appears that freeDOS supports openGEM, but > even that hasn't been updated in a couple years, and even the most recent > update looks more limited than some of the other GUI's I found during my > research, for example Seal 2. Should I not get my hopes up regarding GUI > development for DOS?
How about FLTK? When you talk about GUI development for DOS, what are you hoping for? Graphical user interfaces tend to require more processor resources then text based interfaces where dos is liked for being close to the hardware, lightweight, and fast. A consideration, abstractions that make graphical user interfaces appealing to programmers tend to have high overhead. Graphical user interfaces in general are not particularly a dos thing. Chances are good if you want a gui that you want to run software that can take advantage of one as well. A modern web browser perhaps? Trouble is, any version of Firefox past version 2 roughly isn't going to work in a dos environment with a gui running on top. I installed Firefox 2.0.0.20 in Windows 98 SE which is Microsoft's last major GUI on top of dos. If you are not the only person who uses your computer, dos is not going to be a good choice for a primary operating system. If software that requires utilization of multiple processing cores is needed, dos is definitely not an option. Id steer you towards ReactOS, but ReactOS isn't anywhere near feature complete let alone stable. So for now if a gui is an absolute must have, give Fedora 18 Linux Gnome 3 or Fluxbox spin a try. Ubuntu may seem more popular than Fedora, but IMHO you will be less frustrated by and more impressed with Fedora. If your computer is at least comparable to an Intel Pentium 4, Linux is probably the best place to be right now. X is nice, but there is also Syllable and Visopsys. Syllable and Visopsys like ReactOS unfortunately really aren't ready for prime time. As computers with features that dos isn't positioned to take advantage of become more common, dos development is going to become less popular. I'll be surprised if GUIs that are comparable to Windows 3.11 let alone Windows 98SE get developed for freedos. Should freedos development focus on attracting developers of new software applications? Maybe not, maybe Syllable, Linux, and Visopsys are better platforms for new software applications. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Precog is a next-generation analytics platform capable of advanced analytics on semi-structured data. The platform includes APIs for building apps and a phenomenal toolset for data science. Developers can use our toolset for easy data analysis & visualization. Get a free account! http://www2.precog.com/precogplatform/slashdotnewsletter _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
