Hi Mark,
"I just got a brand new computer with WindowsXP. I want
to install FreeDOS on that computer but I don't
want to change my WindowsXP installation."
I've never really understood this.
1. Nearly anything you'd ever want to do in FreeDOS can be done without
going anywhere near a hard drive or it's o/s. It's very easy to create a
bootable FreeDOS CD or bootable FreeDOS data stick and just run your
programs from there.
2. Anyone who is interested in FreeDOS would insist on re-building any
PC that ever landed on their desk. The first thing I do to an XP machine
is run FreeDOS FDISK with the /clearall option. You don't want the
disease of XP anywhere near your lovely new PC. Even if you do want XP,
you can simply create a bootable partition formatted as FAT to "install"
FreeDOS and then put Windoze on the next partition and so on. Anyone who
runs a PC with only one partition is a fool, but unfortunately Microsoft
recommend this exact strategy to the OEMs and guess what ... the OEMs do
what they're told!
Another option for anyone serious about FreeDOS is simply add a second
hard drive; it's cheap, and it's a lot easier and much safer in terms of
disaster recovery and you can also use it for swap file etc.
However, FreeDOS could soon be a relic that's only of interest to niche
market of people who want to run ancient programs on old hardware. The
problem is that if you can't connect to popular modern networks your
chosen o/s becomes of little use.
At the time of writing (Feb 2006) FreeDOS kicks-ass on modern hardware,
even big servers with dual xeons, SCSI RAID and 4Gb of memory (as long
as you don't use EMM386).
However, two recent changes to Windows networks have relegated FreeDOS
to the recycle bin:
1. LM authentication is no longer enabled once a corporation moves to
Windows Server 2003. No IT manager or corporate Admin would ever agree
to turn it on either, as it's a serious security risk. FreeDOS does not
have a network client that can authenticate against Kerberos.
2. SMB signing is now the default on Windows networks and FreeDOS can't
sign SMB packets.
--
Gerry Hickman (London UK)
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