Hi, On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 11:27 AM, Bret Johnson <bretj...@juno.com> wrote: >> >> So if they aren't overly concerned, I guess I shouldn't be either. > > FWIW, I use MS-DOS on a daily basis instead of FD for reasons > like this. MS-DOS is, by far, the most stable of the DOS's, and > is still the "minimum standard" to which others must compare.
I disagree. While I've used MS-DOS in the past (and it's by far the most popular DOS), it's not the best overall except in rare cases. Same with other DOSes. We could probably have interesting discussions about the pros and cons (lacks, bugs, improvements) of MS vs. DR vs. FD, etc., but for now I'll avoid that. (Where is Matthias Paul when you need him? Heh.) While lots more software was tested with MS in the past, *to me personally*, there are few reasons to want MS-DOS specifically, if at all, so I don't miss it. Since FreeDOS is open (and MS-DOS is harder to buy these days), I think a better goal would be using and improving that. (And DOSBox gets more commercial use than any, e.g. lots of old Gog.com games.) However, for a developer or tester, dual booting (MetaKern?) is probably the ultimate solution for everything. Then again, as far as that goes, MS is far inferior to DR, which is far inferior to FD due to partition installation handling (which was one of the reasons I ended up having to use DR on my old P166 and also why I didn't bother re-installing that but instead prefer FD on this Core i5). > I would classify possible file corruption as a major problem, not > a side issue. Sure, if it was 50%, but we're talking like %0.02 (or maybe 5%, I don't honestly know, but it can't be that high ... feel free to prove otherwise though). In all seriousness, real mode and FAT aren't meant for high security. Bad things are always possible (even in Linux or Windows, you can still hang or crash the machine by accident). Things could always be better, but if you're that serious, start writing a pmode ext2 Linux fs driver for FD. :-)) > I do tests with FD just to test basic compatibility, but don't > really trust it 100%. I don't trust anything 100%, mainly because no software is totally trustworthy. There are a lot of DOSes (and compatible environments) for a lot of reasons, and similar to hundreds of Linux distros, we're not likely to convince everyone to *exclusively* run native, under VBox, VMware, Win9x, etc. any time soon. So there will always be environmental issues in software beyond just the kernel proper. I get it, MS' kernel is pretty good, but it's far from perfect, and it's far from ideal in getting a copy (most people just use old ones from years past). FD isn't perfect but is very very very good, thanks to the hard work of a lot of people (hi, Eric!). > The FD utilities, as a rule, are more useful > to me than the kernel. Some of the FD utilities are just as good > or even better better than their MS counterparts, while others > are not. All software has bugs, just some are more obvious and painful than others. Seriously, I know it's heavy cliche and exhausting, but if you have any complaints, start coding, patches accepted! That's the only way to make progress. (I'm honestly not against binary patching either.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
