Windows 3.11 and Windows 9x seem to be the closest thing to a 32 bit DOS environment that I know of. I agree that creating a "32 bit dos" would be awkward. Heck, 20 bit memory addressing is awkward, isn't it?
If you need to run dos games or want to run a Wordprocessor like Wordperfect on an old computer that can't run Linux, Freedos 1.1 debugged makes a lot of sense. As far as 32 bit Dos or a Windows 95/98/98SE/Me clone, I guess that is too much work and that it really doesn't make sense. Actually, I wish someone would release a Windows 3.1 driver that can get my ATI Rage 128, XPERT 2000, card to output 256 colors. For that matter, how hard would it be to make a Windows like graphical user interface that can run Windows 3.1 software? What might make sense is being able to dedicate one core in a multi core 64 bit computer to running freedos via say a hypervisor. A hypervisor is a simplified OS where it's sole purpose to exist is to create a virtual hardware environment for other OS'es. Dosbox seems to run on any modern computer at this point. Syllable is very interesting from the standpoint of being simple, but the project needs more help. I think the number one source of complexity today in operating systems is that companies which produce computer hardware are Microsoft Windows NT centric. In other words, they develop for a proprietary OS and keep their mouths shut about how their product is actually laid out. Linux gets a bad rap because many modern graphics cards don't work 100%, especially AMD video cards. If there was enough competition like there used to be and people were more aggressive about using open source OSes, companies wouldn't be able to survive keeping their mouths shut and focusing on NT only. AMD and NVIDIA do release Linux drivers, but they are always deficient which I think is on purpose. If you want to be able to run Windows software, help the ReactOS people. ReactOS has a long ways to go where I think significantly more help would improve the outlook of people who have been working on the project a long time and overall increase productivity. Testing ReactOS is helping. Say you reverse engineer a piece of modern ATI/AMD hardware that a lot of people have which doesn't even work well in Linux. Something I've been mulling over is putting together a company that only produces standards compliant computer hardware where the standards are open ones that are readily available to everyone. It would be a big jump though to go from a B.S. in computer science to a company producing computer hardware that is both cutting edge and OSS compatible. What would the business model for such a company be? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second. Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You. Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
