Re: [Freedos-user] Poll and ideas compressed filesystem
Eric Auer wrote: Ages ago there where some discussions about DOSzilla (Mozilla Firefox for DOS) but the project was never released and is dead. Firefox for DOS would be a killer application, pretty cool. I remember the suggestion coming in from time to time but I also remember the insane dependencies firefox needs... You may have overlooked one dependency, not of the functional type you listed but an add-on necessary for a browser to be usable today: Flash. My browser of choice is Mozilla's Seamonkey suite running under eComStation (OS/2). It shares a profile and all the data files with the Win version so when I need to boot Win I have all the same bookmarks, history, mail etc. I am not comfortable allowing Win to connect to the WEB, but I am increasingly having to boot Win because the OS/2 Flash is still version 5. Adobe has apparently recently allowed the current version to be ported but time and money to do that is scarce. So while I would like to see a real browser under DOS, if it doesn't include the current Flash it would be crippled, and maybe not worth the bother. Ray -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Poll and ideas compressed filesystem
On Jan 17, 2009, at 11:24 AM, Ray Davison wrote:
You may have overlooked one dependency, not of the functional type you
listed but an add-on necessary for a browser to be usable today:
Flash.
I disagree.
Flash may be everywhere, but I'd hardly call it an essential browser
component.
I don't have flash in my browser (by choice) and there's very little
that I can't access due to lack of flash support.
Admittedly, a lot of the meeting sites and some of the classroom
software requires flash to operate properly, but it's hardly a
requirement for 90 percent of browser users.
Generally, on web sites that have flash content, the conent itself is
simply some silly animation that adds nothing to the page, or it's
some scrolling version of the entir web page, which in my opinion is a
waste of both bandwidth and resources.
Needless to say, I avoid such sites, and as a result, the requirements
for flash capable browsing is nearly 0.
(note I say nearly)
And, for those sites where it is required for obtaining actual useful
information, I would have no problem moving to another machine/oos for
the job.
Until flash actually gets used for value added content, it's inclusion
in a web browser is by no means obligatory.
Now, java script might be useful to include, though as with flash, a
great deal of the javascript content is simply garbage that the page
would be better without, or someone uses javascript to generate the
html (another waste of resources imo) especially when the javascript
does nothing but a bunch of document.writeln('htmlbody/body/
html'); type things, with no dynamic content at all.
Admittedly, these kinds of pages are (thankfully) growing less as
folks actually realize javascript can be used for useful things, and
not just to make a page look fancy when it isn't, but a browser
probably should include at least some support for it.
But, since javascript has been thoroughly documented, adding support
shouldn't be that big of a problem, whereas flash is nearly impossible
to get specs on, and adding it to a dos--based browser would be no
trivial task, even if it were necessary for generic browsing (which,
it isn't)
Of course, anyone is entitled to tell me how wrong they believe me to
be, and I'll of course listen, but unless someone can prove to me the
web can't get along w/o flash, it's not likely anyone will change my
opinions on this particular topic.
Anyway, that's my take on it.
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Re: [Freedos-user] Poll and ideas compressed filesystem
Travis Siegel wrote: there's very little that I can't access due to lack of flash support. Keep looking. It is getting to be more all the time. And it is content, not just adds. And some sites that worked fine with version 5 apparently had nothing better to do and upgraded to later versions. Ray -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Poll and ideas compressed filesystem
Hi Michael, I don't want a graphical web browser at all in freedos. The current option does not support out of the box filtering or plugins comparable to what Internet Explorer and Firefox have. True for the plugins, but one could write ad-filters for Arachne, too. On the other hand, maybe Firefox is a bad comparison: My firefox with ca 30 tabs open burns around 340 MB (incl virtual) memory at the moment, which is way more than you would expect from any normal DOS app ;-). How about the ram-efficiency of other browsers, maybe Opera, Epiphany, Dillo, MidBrowser, Konqueror? I hear that Chrome trades speed for RAM in giving each tab a separate thread? Freedos is not a system that completely insulates the hardware nor is it a multiuser system, so it's appropriateness for network applications is questionable. Especially, considering that the The guys from deskwork.de DOS GUI write that their thing is relatively secure - probably because it provides more or less no server services accessible from the outside :-) general attitude seems to be use whatever exists for dos to network it, networking generally isn't attractive. Freedos currently doesn't support Netware 4.11 very well where a lot of the netware IPX drivers, if you can find any, are designed to be opened on a Windows system. I had assumed that IPX and Netware 4 are very very old? On the other hand, there is no DOS ADS client either ;-) There also was some discussion about various kernels vs various netware versions and workarounds in bugzilla and on other locations, if you have netware, have a look :-) As far as compressed filesystems are concerned or supporting NTFS, you are getting away from being 100% MS DOS compatible. Not if you ask me... Loading a new driver does not make the system misbehave for old apps, does it...? :-) Freedos isn't 100% compatible yet, more reverse engineering needs to be done to make it so. MS-DOS 6.22 supported disk I disagree. Reverse engineering might cause license troubles but of course you can do things like comparing int call logs between running apps in MS DOS and FreeDOS. WHICH apps apart from 386enh mode of Win3 / WfW3 are not compatible yet? compression, but that was a late addition to dos and it created a lot of problems for some dos programs. There were some patent issues for MS with the whole story of compression, so I would avoid cloning their compressor. But I did not know there were problems for apps! Which? Porting MARS netware emulator to freedos would make it far more attractive for networking than it currently is. A new netware client for DOS? Why netware? Everybody seems to be using SMB (Windows) or NFS (Unix) today?? The advantage of supporting NTFS is that freedos could be used as a tool potentially to work on and repair a modern NT based Windows system. There are so many versions of NTFS though, a lot of work would be involved to create a decent implementation of NTFS for a dos based environment. It makes more sense to support NTFS under Linux as NTFS is meant for use on a multi user system. Probably true. And for the repair task in DOS you already have the semi-commercial NTFS4DOS driver anyways, but I agree that Linux works fine for disinfecting Windows ;-) Eric -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Poll and ideas compressed filesystem
Hi! I think a compressed file system is a good idea, for reasons mentioned before. As you seem to have experience, please sketch the possible usage and contents in a bit more detail. is instead of showing projected free space, show me the actual free space when i do a dir. You could only show the free raw space in the compressed image. How many kilobytes of files you really fit in there depends on how well a file compresses, which depends on contents. One of the reasons why I wanted to know that. Showing the raw space at least gives you the worst case (not compressible) info, though. I for one wold be happy to test such a system, and I'm sure some of the embeded systems folks would be happy as well. Please give more details about such a test: How much disk and RAM space would you want to use and how much content would be in the compressed FS, how much of it would be written to, etc etc? Thanks :-) By the way, does anybody have experience with driver-based FAT32 devices (USB, RAMDISK, as opposed to kernel built-in FAT32 eg harddisk)? Would FAT32 be okay for compressed drives, too? Note that FAT32 takes 0.5 MB for FATs and it must have 64 k clusters (eg 32+0.5 MB size). Eric -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Poll and ideas compressed filesystem
Hi! In what way would FreeDOS differ from Linux 2.4 then? Apart from being worse in performance, multitasking, having no GUI, no way to show several apps at once... it won't need an eternity to boot or reboot ... Reboots are rare when you can hibernate instead :-) But DOS boots so fast that hibernate is not even needed. it won't need huge resources to work at all ... How huge is huge? A friend ran a 2.2 Linux on 14-32 MB long time, what is a normal amount of RAM modern cool DOS apps will consume? it won't try to see everything as files ... The file / char dev / block dev interface of DOS is not super duper elegant either, so what is wrong? it has a way better DOSEmu :-)) Because it runs faster and full screen but only once? it won't have zillions of apps which are not really usable... Let me guess, your mouse is broken so you need DOS? ;-) PS: What does all that tell us about compressed FS...? Eric -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Poll and ideas compressed filesystem
Robert Riebisch schrieb: Eric Auer wrote: - would you want a compressed filesystem to be writeable? The question to me is: Would you want a compressed filesystem at all? My discouraging answer: I just don't need it. I never used compressed filesystems anywhere, rather I buy a bigger harddisk but I would never bother with this as it will make things generally more slow and incompatible. I think, what FreeDOS needs for daily use is a good graphical web browser, Ages ago there where some discussions about DOSzilla (Mozilla Firefox for DOS) but the project was never released and is dead. Firefox for DOS would be a killer application, pretty cool. Also Arachne as 32 bit could be pretty cool, look at dr webspyoder or lineo embrowser (arachne forks), them start much faster and feel much smoother. After almost 10 years of Arache being Open Source the development fatally failed, I think you need to be a hardcore optimist to except to come a 32 bit version ever. a nice e-mailer, Not a top priority for me. a word processor like Abiword, FOSS USB drivers, ... Agreed. Robert Riebisch -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Poll and ideas compressed filesystem
Eric Auer schrieb: Hi Robert, Travis, Robert wrote: Would you want a compressed filesystem at all? My discouraging answer: I just don't need it. I think, what FreeDOS needs for daily use is a good graphical web browser, a nice e-mailer, a word processor like Abiword, FOSS USB drivers, ... In what way would FreeDOS differ from Linux 2.4 then? Apart from being worse in performance, multitasking, having no GUI, no way to show several apps at once... Simple, small, DOS compatible, fast booting, modular, easy to understand, stable. Without complex tricks, you only get EITHER bootable OR writeable compressed filesystems if you ask me... Non-writeable makes it less useful. Non-bootable is bad but may be tricked with known workarrounds (suggestions already made about this topic). -mr -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Poll and ideas compressed filesystem
Michael Robinson schrieb: As far as compressed filesystems are concerned or supporting NTFS, you are getting away from being 100% MS DOS compatible. No, it depends on how it's being implemented. Freedos isn't 100% compatible yet, more reverse engineering needs to be done to make it so. True. The advantage of supporting NTFS is that freedos could be used as a tool potentially to work on and repair a modern NT based Windows system. Yes. It makes more sense to support NTFS under Linux as NTFS is meant for use on a multi user system. That's already done. But isn't much point to suggest to use linux on a dos list? -mr -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Poll and ideas compressed filesystem
Eric Auer wrote: - would you want a compressed filesystem to be writeable? The question to me is: Would you want a compressed filesystem at all? My discouraging answer: I just don't need it. I think, what FreeDOS needs for daily use is a good graphical web browser, a nice e-mailer, a word processor like Abiword, FOSS USB drivers, ... Robert Riebisch -- BTTR Software http://www.bttr-software.de/ -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Poll and ideas compressed filesystem
On Jan 13, 2009, at 3:41 PM, Robert Riebisch wrote: Eric Auer wrote: - would you want a compressed filesystem to be writeable? The question to me is: Would you want a compressed filesystem at all? My discouraging answer: I just don't need it. I think, what FreeDOS needs for daily use is a good graphical web browser, a nice e-mailer, a word processor like Abiword, FOSS USB drivers, ... While I agree about some of the needed things, a compressed file system would do wonders for those folks using freedos on embeded devices, it would allow plenty of additional space on the boot devices, especially if it used lzw or lzh compression. Also, the idea of reading the entire 2gb into memory (where available) then reorganizing it and writing it back would be useful. As well, as the ability to write to the file system, building from existing partitions is nice for creating boot images and such is good, but without the ability to write to the file system, it would be strictly limited in how it could be used. I think it would definitely be best if the file system could be written to, since it would allow it to be used s a standard file system. -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Poll and ideas compressed filesystem
Hi Robert, Travis, Robert wrote: Would you want a compressed filesystem at all? My discouraging answer: I just don't need it. I think, what FreeDOS needs for daily use is a good graphical web browser, a nice e-mailer, a word processor like Abiword, FOSS USB drivers, ... In what way would FreeDOS differ from Linux 2.4 then? Apart from being worse in performance, multitasking, having no GUI, no way to show several apps at once... Travis wrote: While I agree about some of the needed things, a compressed file system would do wonders for those folks using freedos on embeded devices, it would allow plenty of additional space on the boot devices, especially if it used lzw or lzh compression. LZO just has smaller and faster decompression. The default compression is smaller and faster, too, unless you set it to high - then it is similar to ZIP/GZIP in most aspects. One of the things I was asking between the lines is: Does compression help at all, now that we have GIF, JPG, ZIP, UPXed binaries and so on? Okay, my Ubuntu also shows me how to waste space with Gnome help in bloated XML files, but a little patching would make it support XML.GZ ;-). If most of your contents is already in compressed file formats, compressed file systems just solve the each file wastes half a cluster on average problem for you. How big are disks for typical embedded systems, how full, with what type of data, and which files are written to? Not asking for a general answer, just for a description of a situation which would gain a lot from compressed FS. Also, the idea of reading the entire 2gb into memory (where available) then reorganizing it and writing it back would be useful. Yes, it is interesting that whole FAT16 filesystems can fit into RAM these days, but you also have to consider the time it takes to download and upload the whole image between your embedded system and your big PC. Unless of course you use the compressed filesystem on the same machine where you also have the big RAM. I assume you also suggest that the normal mode of operation while the filesystem is in use would be disk backed, not RAM? Of course it might also be useful to have a big compressed RAMDISK so you can have more files in RAM than your amount of RAM would normally allow, probably on PC, not embedded? As well, as the ability to write to the file system, building from existing partitions is nice for creating boot images and such is good, but without the ability to write to the file system, it would be strictly limited in how it could be used. Without complex tricks, you only get EITHER bootable OR writeable compressed filesystems if you ask me... I think it would definitely be best if the file system could be written to, since it would allow it to be used as a standard file system. Depends - what and how much of it would you want to write? And why not have one compressed read-only drive letter and one uncompressed normal one? The normal one could simply be the drive where the compressed image is stored, as I would say the image should be a file, not a partition :-) Eric -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Poll and ideas compressed filesystem
Would you want a compressed filesystem at all? My discouraging answer: I just don't need it. I think, what FreeDOS needs for daily use is a good graphical web browser, a nice e-mailer, a word processor like Abiword, FOSS USB drivers, ... In what way would FreeDOS differ from Linux 2.4 then? Apart from being worse in performance, multitasking, having no GUI, no way to show several apps at once... Perhaps in the way that it won't need an eternity to boot or reboot ... Perhaps in the way that it won't need huge resources to work at all ... Perhaps in the way that it won't try to see everything as files ... Perhaps in the way that it has a way better DOSEmu :-)) Perhaps in the way that it won't have zillions of apps which are not really usable... ... Perhaps in the way that it's not that POS that Linux still is. -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Poll and ideas compressed filesystem
I think a compressed file system is a good idea, for reasons mentioned before. (take your point about being bootable, or compressed, but not both) One thing I'd like to see with a compressed file system though, (which is something none of the others ever did) is instead of showing projected free space, show me the actual free space when i do aa dir. If the free space doesn't change after I write some smaller files to it that's ok, or if it reports 500K less after writing a 1.2MB file to it, that's ok too, I just want to see exactly how much space ther is, instead of someone else's idealized view of how much *could* be usable. Otherwise, there's really not too much else to mention I guess. I for one wold be happy to test such a system, and I'm sure some of the embeded systems folks would be happy as well. -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Poll and ideas compressed filesystem
I don't want a graphical web browser at all in freedos. The current option does not support out of the box filtering or plugins comparable to what Internet Explorer and Firefox have. Freedos is not a system that completely insulates the hardware nor is it a multiuser system, so it's appropriateness for network applications is questionable. Especially, considering that the general attitude seems to be use whatever exists for dos to network it, networking generally isn't attractive. Freedos currently doesn't support Netware 4.11 very well where a lot of the netware IPX drivers, if you can find any, are designed to be opened on a Windows system. As far as compressed filesystems are concerned or supporting NTFS, you are getting away from being 100% MS DOS compatible. Freedos isn't 100% compatible yet, more reverse engineering needs to be done to make it so. MS-DOS 6.22 supported disk compression, but that was a late addition to dos and it created a lot of problems for some dos programs. Porting MARS netware emulator to freedos would make it far more attractive for networking than it currently is. The advantage of supporting NTFS is that freedos could be used as a tool potentially to work on and repair a modern NT based Windows system. There are so many versions of NTFS though, a lot of work would be involved to create a decent implementation of NTFS for a dos based environment. It makes more sense to support NTFS under Linux as NTFS is meant for use on a multi user system. -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
