Hi Felix,
actually Linux and Windows are rather similar to use for sighted people, just click around in menus. While it is possible to have speech or Braille (if you use that?) already on during the install, I would feel a lot safer with having separate machines for separate operating systems. Or at least separate harddisks. Another option would be to install Linux inside some virtual machine in Windows. That way you avoid stress regarding the risk of damaging your Windows and you can use the Windows speech output during the install in case it is hard to enable the Linux speech output early enough. However, I see no general problem with running dosemu2 inside Linux inside a virtual machine inside Windows. Dosemu2 is between a virtual machine and a specialized environment for DOS, so you get more realistic results compared to Dosbox which usually simulates even DOS and at the same time you get less troubles with DOS because dosemu2 already includes custom tricks to help with the integration. So it is both better than dosbox and easier than using a complete virtual machine. For example, you can use a Linux directory as dosemu drive, while virtual machines only allow disk images. Of course dosemu also allows disk images, you can mix both styles. Virtual machines usually come with drivers for guest operating systems to improve integration, but those are not usually available for DOS. We do have a small number of drivers for DOS for selected virtual machines and maybe somebody else can post an overview here. I think it is easier to use Linux as guest in a virtual machine in Windows: Then you can have some virtual drive and network sharing (drivers for Linux exist) to make Linux easier to use. From there, you can run DOS inside dosemu2, which as far as I know is not directly available for Windows. I would not exclude the possibility, though. You can also try a variety of virtual machines for Windows: Some may work better for running DOS and some may connect better to your Windows speech synthesizer and if you are lucky, some have both advantages at the same time. Maybe somebody else can share some thoughts here. Dosemu2 is not an alternative to FreeDOS: It just is some environment optimized for running DOS. It usually comes with a version of FreeDOS pre-installed, along with some dosemu-specific drivers. Of course you can and should extend and upgrade the installed FreeDOS from there on. Classic dosemu is usually available pre-packaged in your software management in Linux. Because everything is free and open, you basically just check the checkbox in the list of available packages to install it. In text style, things could be "apt-get install dosemu" or similar. A default configuration file will be created in your home directory when you start using dosemu. You can edit the file to add drives (disk images or Linux directories) or modify settings (for example sound or net related). Note that dosemu originally has been using vm86 mode in 32 bit Linux, which gives good performance. Because vm86 is not easily accessible in 64 bit systems, it uses built in CPU emulation there. The use of vm86 interfaces and similar goodies also is the reason why I expect dosemu to not be available as app for native Windows, but I might be mistaken. You say you redirect the serial port of DOS inside dosbox to a Windows simulation of a serial port speech synth. Is that for nostalgic reasons? I would expect it to be easier to tell any Windows speech synth to read the text shown on your DOS text screen in dosbox? At least for dosemu, as said, you can use it in a plain text mode which even works over telnet or ssh connections so it should be easy to let a speech Synth read those. As you mention Orca in Ubuntu: That would be a Linux which has dosemu in the list of default available apps. Regards, Eric PS: Do I understand you correctly that there are DOS TSR which analyze graphical DOS screens, extract texts and then output those on the serial port for speech synths? _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
