On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 1:27 AM, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 11:21 PM, dmccunney <dennis.mccun...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 11:26 PM, Ralf Quint <freedos...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> The big question is if OpenWatcom continues to be a viable option to be >>> used with FreeDOS. If the official site would be down for good and >>> Jiri's fork doesn't work right, the the pooch is pretty much screwed... >> >> The pooch arguably *has* been screwed for years. DOS is a legacy OS >> few folks have any real reason to care about. > > Dennis, once again, you're on the wrong mailing list if you're going > to constantly harp on how obsolete and useless DOS is.
Please learn to read. I never said DOS was useless - I said it was a legacy OS few folks have a real reason to care about. Like it or not, that's true. >> People involved in things like compiler writing will be targeting Windows, >> Linux, >> and the like. > > Windows and Linux are too volatile to rely upon. Sure, they're > popular, but everything changes very quickly, and many compilers have > broken or been abandoned due to upstream failures. Don't pretend that > using a "modern" OS is somehow a panacea to common technical (and > political) problems. Too volatile to rely upon? If that's the case, perhaps you can explain why the vast majority of desktop systems run Windows, and the vast majority of web servers run Linux? Many millions of people rely on both daily. I'm one of them. Progress brings volatility with it, but do does life. Somehow, we all manage to deal with it. > The fact that "nobody" (according to you, although I can name a few > non-commercial ones) targets DOS is irrelevant to us. We can't make > anybody do anything. It's here if they want it (free, stable, > well-documented). If not, good luck, go somewhere else. Name whoever you like. I'll be more impressed if you name any *commercial* offerings targeting DOS, since the reasons people care about things computing related tend to involve money. One of the reasons DOS gets little love these days is that there is little or no money in it. Who will *pay* to have DOS code written? >> Even the embedded market is being taken over by things like 32 >> ARM CPUs without the "real mode" issues involved in systems running 16 >> bit Intel architectures and the bewildering variety of memory models >> DOS programmers had to deal with. > > What are you referring to, the kernel? Sure, that uses 16-bit mode > because there's no major incentive to switch. Lots of other things are > using 32-bit flat model (since decades!), e.g. DJGPP and OpenWatcom. And if you don't have a 32 bit kernel, you jump through all sorts of hoops because of it. Look at the fun involved in trying to run protected mode stuff under DOS. There's *plenty* of incentive to switch, which is why most of the computing world *did* switch, and uses something *other* than DOS. But lets imagine for a moment that $DEITY works a miracle to order, and FreeDOS magically acquires a working 32 bit kernel. What do we get? We theoretically get an OS with a much larger address space, but it still single user and single tasking. How much traction do you think it will get? > Don't tell me that (optional) 16-bit support prevents anybody from > doing anything. We've had both for a long time, much longer than ARM > has been popular. Don't pretend that ARM is superior, it is definitely > not! I have nothing against it, but seriously, x86 has much more > worthwhile legacy that still works. Why throw away what already > works?? I didn't say ARM was superior. I simply said even the embedded world was shifting to 32 bit CPUs because it *could* - the hardware has become small, fast, and cheap enough. There's little reason *not* to, and once you *have* the more powerful hardware, you start finding uses for it. It's the same reason why I predict that all cell phones will increasingly be smart phone because they *can* be. They will be powerful enough to run something like Android, and will. ARM gets extensive use in the embedded space because because it's more power efficient than X86 when the scarce resource these days is battery life, and there is substantial OS and toolchain support, but there are other players like MIPS also in the market. (And note that as we get 64 bit ARM CPUs, we'll start seeing them in the server room *because* of that power efficiency. Think folks like Google and Facebook *won't* install ARM based rack servers by the thousands if they can drop their data center power bills by doing it? If you do, think again...) And increasingly, even embedded applications require 32 bit address space and multi-tasking. Tell you what. Restrict yourself to *only* FreeDOS and things that run under it. Do *all* of your computing that way. Do all of your web surfing that way. Tell me how you make out. I know it *can* be done, because a few folks here seem to successfully do it. I could not. Too much of what I do requires capabilities that do not exist in DOS and DOS apps, and *can't*. DOS is fun to play with, but "play" is the operative word. The *work* gets done elsewhere. ______ Dennis https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
