Hi, On Sun, Nov 8, 2020 at 8:10 AM Mark Olesen <markjole...@gmail.com> wrote: > > That sounds fantastic. It is unfortunate development was abandoned. > Having multiple choices seems like a good idea.
TinyCore Linux also has a "Core" (11 MB) "base system which provides only a command line interface". The biggest problem is probably non-free / non-redistributable firmware, not the actual wireless drivers. (My ancient Dell laptop has BCM4312, which is a minor pain to get working.) > Q: Does anyone know if DELL still uses FreeDOS for firmware and BIOS > updates? Or maybe they used to ship a computer with FreeDOS as the > primary OS? > > At one point, I know they did. I have not kept up with the times, > however. I would imagine it would be very lite? I know almost nothing, but the only link I can think of is this one: * https://www.dell.com/support/article/en-us/sln171755/update-the-dell-bios-in-a-linux-or-ubuntu-environment?lang=en#updatebios2015 But keep in mind that BIOS/CSM is effectively dead: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface#CSM_booting "In November 2017, Intel announced that it planned to phase out support for CSM by 2020." I don't know the exact rationale. It may be to remove support burdens, reduce costs, speed up booting times, or just drop unnecessary legacy. Actually, I half got the impression it was for power management / battery life reasons. But it could also be for security (secure boot?). (Windows is still 80% marketshare, everything else considered relevant is "POSIX" [usually Linux]. Hence nobody majorly needs BIOS/CSM anymore, AFAIK.) > I have an OpenBSD Lenovo A485 laptop rig. Since I do not run Windows, > they provided a bootable ISO. I have no idea what they are using? IIRC, FreeBSD has the best hardware support out of all the *BSD family. The big differences with OpenBSD are that they refuse NDAs, insist on building atop actual hardware, support various sentimental machines, and also have a monolithic kernel with no separate modules. (Corrections welcome, I could be wrong.) Apparently 6.8 was just released last month for their 25th anniversary. (I've only, very barely, tried earlier versions under VM.) Then again, I was surprised (a few years ago) that FreeBSD was still supporting ancient ARMv6 (early RaspPi??), but even there, the only Tier One platforms are AMD64 and i386 (with various others under Tier Two). Even most Linux distributions (e.g. Ubuntu) have dropped i386 support. There are many full Linux laptops for sale these days. I'm looking to buy one myself soon. This Dell Chromebook isn't too shabby either. (We really need a DOS Chromebook. Obviously it won't have Chrome. Or at least something that can run QEMU. This one does [Linux "beta", cmdline only, optional], but I don't think it allows switching OS images, probably for security reasons.) _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
