All of the reasons that Thomas voiced, and to that I add control. I
want to automatically save files where I want them, not expecting a
worker to go to "documents' then choose amongst various "folders" to
find the correct one, which sometimes is not. We use WordStar for DOS
and FoxPro for DOS. We only use Quattro Pro for accounting files that
are before about 1990. Searching for files or info inside files is fast.
Games are not an issue.
I think I about covered it. Oh, yes, it was an improvement over CP/M
amd TRS-DOS. Another one-there were written manuals, many of which I
still have.
John
On 4/14/21 9:23 AM, Thomas Desi wrote:
HI Johnpaul - whom are you addressing in your mail saying
"So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?"
just in case… ;) here is my „ranting rating“:
- I am 50ish and not so much nostalgic about computing, but:
- want to get rid of networking on my „composing tool“
- want to have a lighting fast bootup
- want to have 1 (one!!) single app that I use,
- don’t want the virus thing (do we?)
- don’t want all those hidden spying/cookies/passwords/logins
- (single user instance, at home, old computer: who ever would want to get into
my files? If they start the computer, they wouldn’t know what to do when seeing
the FreeDos splash screen ; ) - Kidding)
- don't want "update nagging“, this has become crazyness. (legacy program like,
e.g. VDE Editor and others can’t possibly made any better … like in „here is the
update to the wheel“..)
- want to be able to switch the thing off with a button: „Zip!“ and walk away
from the screen.
- (and no waiting or „the computer was not correctly shut down … bla blabla“)
- No „power saving“ or „standby modes“ which anyway also consume quite an
amount of energy, with funny standby-lights flashing all night in your
appartment. Just switch it entirely off.
- single simple view of what I have written (actual OS suggest to become a
virtuoso in creating folders/directories and drop files on a „desktop“ which is
a fake folder, too…
- want to have single files that represent an „app“. (not thousands of
libraries, dependencies, installs, dlls, blablabl)
- a disk with FEW files alltogether. (Windows10 uses around 300,000 files for a
fresh 12 GIGABYTE install! THREEHUNDRED THOUSAND)
- a system of a handful of commands I program on my „macro pad“ - and press it
without need to type in, not even „dir“ or „cd ..“ or „type“ etc…
- want SIMPLICITY, purism, „control“ ...
- want to learn to understand a little how actually a computer works as a tool,
not as a consumer gadget that could - theoretically - do EVERYTHING and drives
me nuts because of the running „why doesn’t it do this and that“…
- and a few more which sound quite similar to your reasons!
I agree that there has been a huge amount of programming work, carefully
written out documentations and alike become obsolete in the last decades.
In my experience (Text/composing/editing( I don’t see ANY difference working on
a Windows10 Computer in Word today and how it was back in say 1988 when I had
my first machine regarding the workflow… Text-editing hasn’t changed in the
last decades, that is why Emacs and VI(m) are still much in use. But I guess
this is a different story and doesn’t fit into this thread.
- T-h-omas
Am 14.04.2021 um 17:59 schrieb Johnpaul Humphrey <jpth1...@gmail.com>:
In light of the "DOS was dead" discussion, I wanted to ask a question.
I was *born* after support was dropped for MS-DOS, so I can't claim
nostalgia as my reason for use. Recently I installed FreeDOS on my
modern HP-Pavilion laptop, alongside BSD, Linux, and plan9. I did this
because I like DOS's speed and assembly programming.
It worked fine after I fixed the beep bug with your help.
So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?
Is it primarily nostalgia? Legacy program support? Speed?
Note that I don't consider running legacy software a bad reason. I was
shocked by how much good software has been "thrown away" because of
its age. On Linux all my favorite software (vi, siag office, twm,
motif &c.) was written before I was born. However, that is not my
primary reason for using FreeDOS. my primary reason is because it is
like the motorcycle of operating systems. It is lightweight, has no
red tape to cut through to do things, and is monotasking. (Monotasking
is also why I don't use it as much as I would like to, but why I use
it at all.)
I figured that if I had a different reason than what everybody
assumes, that some of you might as well. Everyone seems to assume that
DOS is used by people who are unable to cope with progress and have to
run their ancient version of word perfect. If that is your reason, it
is not a bad reason. I was thinking of eventually writing a 64-bit dos
work [sort of] alike eventually, but it would not be able to support
legacy programs due to segment offset addressing and a million other
things.
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