On 10/24/2022 6:38 PM, Bret Johnson wrote:
Anyway, I'm wondering how "involved" FreeDOS should be in the VM world
(I think in today's world the vast majority of users install DOS under
a VM rather than on real hardware, though I personally do both). How
involved in testing/recommending applications (including games) for
compatibility should FreeDOS actually be, particularly when a VM is
involved?
To be honest, we should not get involved with ANY VM at all. This will
just lead us potentially into a deep dark rabbit hole that leads us far
away from Kansas^H^H^H^H^H^Hthe DOS world.
The goal of FreeDOS is to be MS-DOS 6.0 compatible, so any VM should be
able to run MS-DOS 6.0, and so should FreeDOS run as well.
Going by the messages either here in the mailing list or the occasional
post on the Facebok page, it seems the vast majority of compatibilty
issues are related to support of specific hardware, mainly sound cards
and network cards. That is absolutely something that is only to be
solved on side of that VM.
Another possible issue is that of incompatibilities with some memory
managers included in FreeDOS. And this is a really tricky part, as there
is very little active participation of the authors in order to properly
diagnose and fix any such issues that would arise..
All in all, I think venturing too far into the support of VMs is a very
slippery slope for us, with only a few people actually participating....
Ralf
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