Hi Jim, Harold / Mercury13, FreeDOSers, > Harold (AKA Mercury Thirteen) and I have been discussing creating a FreeDOS > 1.2 distribution. He's volunteered to put together the new distribution. I > thought we should share that with freedos-devel to see if anyone else wants > to help with this!
Good idea, thanks :-) Based on Mateusz' collection of FreeDOS style packaged DOS software, I assume? Sharing new packaging results with his repository? :-) > FreeDOS 1.2 is planned to be a refresh to FreeDOS 1.1, using updated > packages, although it will also use a new version of the installer and a > simplified install process. Simplified sounds good. > My thoughts for the simpler installation process: > > 1. *Boot the FreeDOS Install CDROM.* This is basically a "live" FreeDOS, > which happens to boot into an automated install process. Or install USB stick, of course! On most systems, you could unzip all packages into a ramdisk to get full functionality. Having all packages fully installed on CD would make the CD too big. It would be nice to have some choices here: For example on old systems, do not do the ramdisk step. A set of "equivalents of all the tools coming with MS DOS" would be only a few megabyte in pre-installed form on the CD, while other, bigger, packages would not be available until you unzip them to ramdisk or harddisk or USB. There could also be an alternate, bigger, download of a CD which has all the packages pre-installed "live", but with no or with a different install process as it will not contain zips to install from. I would vote for NO install process in that variant - it is safer. As a third download, there could be some tool which puts DOS on your USB disk or stick directly, for use with for example a few popular Windowses and Linuxes. > - If you Exit the process at any time, you go back to a DOS prompt. (This > is useful for people who just want to run FreeDOS from CD without > installing it.) Makes sense. > 2. *Does the C: drive exist?* > - If not, prompt the user to run FDISK. Reboot to re-read the partition > table. Dangerous! There should be an alternative where the CD installs DOS to USB stick instead. > 3. *Is the C: drive usable?* > - If not, prompt the user to run FORMAT. As above: Dangerous, allow other drives as install target. Modern BIOSes often have a "boot from which device" menu. > 4. *Start the INSTALL program.* > - This installs everything, using the new install program. > > 5. *Run SYS to make the C: drive bootable.* Not to forget checking for the C: partition to be bootable in the partition table. You can proceed even if it is not, but then the user has to know that they have to edit their hopefully existing boot menu to add an item to boot C: > 6. *Do any follow-up steps* (such as creating a default CONFIG.SYS and > AUTOEXEC.BAT, set language, etc). > > 7. *Done* Regards, Eric PS: Happy new year everybody! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
