Op 22-8-2009 5:34, Michael Robinson schreef:
> DOS predates more than 4 gigabytes of memory on a single computer, yet
> there has been a LOT of discussion on having Freedos be able to handle
> that much memory.
>
And Windows (9x) predates FreeDOS largely, your point being? For the
times we're in DOS, it might be worthwile speeding things up by having
access to all memory for ramdisks and caches.
I also like to be able to have DOS work from CD-ROM, and be usefull
(persistent changes) without affecting any harddisk at all. Things like
this could require a lot of temporary working space --> ramdisks.
> There has also been a lot of discussion on making sound cards which
> lack dos drivers work in Freedos.
>
reminds me of Linux somehow. They seem to be able to write their own
drivers rather than depending on vendors who are not willing to write
drivers for non-Windows operating systems.
> My concern is, these features won't exist in an MS-DOS compatible
> version of DOS. MS-DOS never did and never will support more than
> 4 gigs of ram. Sound cards that came out after Microsoft dropped
> support for MS-DOS will never work in MS-DOS either. There are
> still potentially some compatibility issues in Freedos. I am
> bugged that Freedos defrag still doesn't work all that well. I'd
> like to see Freedos defrag get fixed.
>
There's other issues yes. However, it's modern systems that reveal DOS
flaws. Try FDISK and FORMAT on 1024GB drives/partitions..not much joy.
Fact is, FreeDOS is an opensource project where anyone can work on
whatever they desire, at their own speed.
> MS-DOS and Freedos too are NOT multi user aware operating systems.
> If you are running a more powerful system than what DOS typically
> runs on, you probably need multi user awareness. A major weakness
>
depends on your project. Some applications require underlying
software/OS to be as a minimal footprint as possible.
> A more appropriate discussion for this list perhaps is how the
> Freedos 1.1 distribution is coming together. Another appropriate
> discussion is how does one set up their own local area network
> update server for Freedos?
>
I think Blair, Jeremy and others already said it's being worked on
behind the screens. As with FreeDOS 1.0, I wasn't involved there due to
lack of commitment and interest in getting things working together, lack
of programming skills etc.
However I do realise the need for some recent FreeDOS distribution so
people worldwide will have the greatest and latest versions of programs
available. Seeing kernel 2035 on projects like Coreboot and bootable
cd-roms that motherboard vendors supply, is just plain horrible.
What I dread though, is the difficulty of the task of getting an
installed FreeDOS in which more complex projects like OpenWatcom, DJGPP,
HX, GCC, 4DOS etc all work out of the box. Also I'm not familiar yet
with FDPKG/FDUPDATE
Seems like Linux is the only OS that has a development environment
deliveredy by default, encouraging people to make modifications. DOS and
Windows are just horrible in this respect, needing to download all kinds
of compilers and tools before anything can be done.
> Freedos 1.1 after all shouldn't add any new functionality to Freedos,
> but it should improve on what is already there.
>
Was this claimed by someone? I can see updated programs, I can see
better working scripts and default configuration files, however I don't
see FreeDOS 1.1 as merely a bugfix release. It's up to the program
authors themselves to fix their software, provided people give feedback
through bugreports and/or patches.
> Another Freedos 2 idea is to implement an open protocol that is not
> TCP/IP for setting up one's own local area network complete with work
> to port it over to the Linux kernel so that your network can use Linux
> servers. The Netware IPX protocol should have been open sourced a long
> time ago when Novell decided to switch to TCP/IP, but it wasn't sadly.
> A lot of the addressing, firewalling, etcetera problems that TCP/IP
> networks have could be bypassed by using a different protocol.
>
some kind of NFS client?
> I just want to see the discussions on here relate to getting Freedos 1.1
> out the door. As far as making Freedos the system of choice on modern
> systems with ridiculous amounts of memory and processing power, Linux
> and other OSes are a far better choice.
>
I lack public internet space for publishing files. Besides, FreeDOS 1.1
isn't in some public repository with daily builds, but on some people's
harddrives. I don't know how much it differs already from FreeDOS 1.0.
My changes so far have been limited to making modifications to the 360KB
bootdisk part of the bootable FreeDOS 1.0 cdrom, allowing to create
modifications to it, then create new ISO and burn it to the same CDRW or
to another disc.
However, that's a manual process which requires still a lot of user
input. I tend to make things complex too fast,
