On Fri, 26 Oct 2007, Bart Oldeman wrote:
> Indeed, the majority of past FreeDOS developers aren't very active. I > might (help) try to get a new kernel release out of the door when I > have time but that's all I can promise. But that's just collecting bug > fixes and basic maintenance work. > > We've always had different goals for FreeDOS: > 1. older PCs, too slow for Windows '95 > 2. embedded > 3. emulators > 4. recovery, exploiting the fact that DOS programs have unlimited > hardware access, DOS being a 'glorified boot loader' > 5. a desktop operating system for modern PCs > > Tom is interested in 4, I am interested in 3 (DOSEMU, so for me > compatibility with existing DOS programs is the most important), and > we've seen the occasional embedded developers (I think Lucho is) and > charities coming by as time passed. And (while I'm more a luser than a dev, though I have done some dev) I split between 1, 3 and 5, and have use for 4 also. 2's got its use too... > And I do think DOS is quite restricted in what you can do with it: the > fact that, no matter how obscure some undocumented detail is, there > will be at least one DOS program that exploits it. That means that for > any extension you cannot just adjust FreeDOS internally as one can > freely do in Linux! But split up fields in structures so the high and > low parts are far apart. Not to mention SMP: do CPU specific parts of > the LoL or SDA always refer to CPU 0? It becomes uglier and uglier... > > At which point it just makes more sense to me to let a bigger OS > multitask/process a more or less unchanged DOS, instead of letting DOS > do the multitasking. I have noticed that in MS-DOS a lot of the bigger or more hardware-specific (e.g. 286+, 386+) stuff is isolated into drivers, tsrs, etc., and not part of the DOS kernel proper, if that might be a better route. -uso. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
