Re: [Freedos-user] DOS was dead...

[Felix Miata]

Liam Proven composed on 2021-04-16 06:16 (UTC-0400):

> I run openSUSE Tumbleweed on my machine in the office. I have been
> working from home for over a year now. I think that when I finally
> return to the office, it will be easier to reformat the machine and
> start over than to update a year-old rolling release that has been
> booted about 3 times in a year.

I have 24 64 bit PCs with Tumbleweed installed. Several have more than one TW
installed, so the installation count may be closer to 30. I have 4 32 bit with 
TW
updated since Jan 1, 6 updated last in 2020, 2 updated last in 2019. IME, 
updating
TW via zypper after 3-4 months since last prior update has never been a problem.
Waiting more than 6-8 months hasn't been terribly unusual either. Only 12 64 bit
PCs have had TW upgraded since 1 March. Only recently did I first have a problem
updating a TW last updated more than a year prior. That was because of a change 
in
compression used for rpms. Offline update cleaned that one up.

All that said, I wouldn't use zypper in the foreseeable future to upgrade one a
year since last because of that same change in compression, but I won't hesitate
to do it offline. The tweaks I make take longer to implement after doing a fresh
installation than the time required to upgrade.

Oh, and I don't ever use VMs except for using OS/2 to run DOS apps.
-- 
Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion,
is based on faith, not on science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 at 17:40, TK Chia  wrote:

> > Is it? By whom?
>
> The whole discussion around the recent Google v. Oracle court case?

Hmm. Good point.

> If anything, it should show clearly that there is _nothing_ _nefarious_
> whatsoever in writing a system which implements a similar API --- or
> even the exact same API --- as some other system.

All right, I have to concede that point.

> It only "sounds" nefarious in the MS-DOS 1.x case, because Microsoft
> "The Great Satan" happens to be involved.

Well, to be fair, MS wasn't a great or especially nefarious company
(yet) back then.

Google didn't go into business offering its own JVM in competition
with Sun or Oracle. (Although Microsoft did!)

Google was targetting a different market that Java was barely present
in. J2ME had significant presence in featurephones, before smartphones
appeared, but they were dying when  Android switched target from being
a Blackberry-knockoff to being an iPhone-knockoff instead.

> I am pretty sure that _any_ interface for interacting with an OS _has_
> to be public information at some point.  Otherwise there is no way for
> third parties to actually, well, write applications for it.
>
> Thank you!

:-D

That is a compelling argument, I have to admit. OK, you have me.

I still maintain there is a bit of a difference between copying a
rival's API in order to launch a competing product, and copying a
rival's API in order to do something completely different with it.

WINE is not a competitor to Windows, any more than Sun's WABI was.
Android is not a competitor to the JVM. AIX was not a competitor to
HP-UX or Solaris, say, except inasmuch as their manufacturers had
rival hardware product lines. Solaris was of no interest or relevance
to IBM RS6000 customers, and AIX was of no interest to Sun customers,
and so on. Each only ran on their own proprietary hardware until late
in the era of proprietary RISC workstations.

But I must concede your overall point.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 at 17:38, Deposite Pirate  wrote:
>
> It's pretty obvious it was highly inspired by the design of CP/M.

Well, yes.

> Also by the design of UNIX, either through CP/M (flat files) or later
> when Microsoft (who's first OS product was Xenix) added pipes and
> other original UNIX ideas.

This is true, but that was MS-DOS _2_ and after that point it started
to diverge radically from its ancestor.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[TK Chia]

Hello Tom,


JMP 5 terminates a program


Just a minor nitpick: that will be `jmp 0' (with cs = PSP).  `call 5'
performs a syscall with the syscall number in the cl register.

(Also, I recall --- if I remember correctly --- the actual CP/M-86
actually exposes a different `int 0xe0' interface for syscalls; and
MS-DOS's `jmp 0' and `call 5' interfaces were actually based on the 8080
version of CP/M.)

Thank you!

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[TK Chia]

Hello Liam,


that's the way other programs talk to the OS; copying it was and is
considered fair game.

Is it? By whom?


The whole discussion around the recent Google v. Oracle court case?

If anything, it should show clearly that there is _nothing_ _nefarious_
whatsoever in writing a system which implements a similar API --- or
even the exact same API --- as some other system.

It only "sounds" nefarious in the MS-DOS 1.x case, because Microsoft
"The Great Satan" happens to be involved.


CP/M's API was not public info, although in those early days most
companies did publish source code to enable software to be ported.


I am pretty sure that _any_ interface for interacting with an OS _has_
to be public information at some point.  Otherwise there is no way for
third parties to actually, well, write applications for it.

Thank you!

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Deposite Pirate]

April 16, 2021 1:36 PM, "Liam Proven"  wrote:
> I have looked into this in considerable depth and that article you
> cite is based on a misunderstanding of the claims.
> 
> Nobody is saying that Paterson or SCP _copied code_ from CP/M into
> QDOS. That is not the claim here, so that oft-cited article wastes a
> lot of effort debunking the wrong claim based on misunderstanding the
> allegation.
> 
> The claim is that Paterson re-implemented, from scratch, cleanly and
> with his own code, the _design_ of CP/M.

It's pretty obvious it was highly inspired by the design of CP/M.
Also by the design of UNIX, either through CP/M (flat files) or later
when Microsoft (who's first OS product was Xenix) added pipes and
other original UNIX ideas.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 at 16:07, tom ehlert  wrote:

> you are talking about the MSDOS 1.0 API.

Yes, I am.

> that's the way other programs talk to the OS; copying it was and is
> considered fair game.

Is it? By whom?

I mean, it definitely happens. There are multiple DOSes out there,
including Datalight ROM-DOS:
https://www.datalight.com/products/rom-dos/

... and the Russian PTS-DOS:
http://phystechsoft.ru/pts-dos

CP/M itself has also been copied multiple times. I am aware of...

• CPMish -- https://github.com/davidgiven/cpmish
• Cromemco CDOS -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromemco_DOS
• SAM Coupé ProDos -- https://sam.speccy.cz/cpm.html

There were others. Most of these were quite niche and not particularly
competitors to DR's OS. E.g. CDOS was contemporary but only ran on
Cromemco kit, AFAIK. SAM ProDos (unrelated to Apple ProDos) was long
after. CPMish is a modern product built by combining 2 very old
replacements for _parts_ of CP/M.

The thing about SCP QDOS is that it started out as something tiny and
niche and no real threat to DR. SCP was a small company. But MS
promised IBM an OS when MS didn't have one, so they bought QDOS,
renamed it, and in the end it went directly up against CP/M-86 but at
1/6 of the price.

That is why DR was aggrieved, and I think it's a legitimate reason.

>  nothing about 'lifting'.

Taking another company's design and re-implementing it does not
involve _stealing_ their code, but it is not completely "fair game" as
you maintain, I think.

> 'design' usually refers to the internal way this API is implemented,
> and was in no way copied.

The API itself was and has a design. _That_  is what was copied. Not
the implementation.

> > That is why it was DR was able to offer DR-DOS.
> MSDOS 1.0 came out 1981. DRDOS 3.31 was published 1988.

DR-DOS was not the first. E.g. DR's DOS Plus, as bundled with the BBC
Micro 8086 co-processor, the BBC Master 512, and the early Amstrad
PC1512 and PC1640, was 3 years earlier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Plus

You might be familiar with the Amstrad machines via the Schneider
brand, I think?

 > and I really doubt it contains many lines from the CP/M code or even
> the same internal organisation as CP/M as it
> would be of little use for directories, memory allocation (segments) and more.

Nobody is alleging it does.

> and was wildly successful doing this ;)

Harsh. Not inaccurate, but harsh.

Someone came along, copied their product and sold it much cheaper, and
the company struggled. No surprise there.

> if it's ok to say that linux lifted the design from unix you may
> insist on saying this.

I would say that, yes.

This is a whole other discussion, but some important core facts:

Novell donated the UNIX™ trademark to the Open Group in 1993. Since
then, any product that passes Open Group certification can be called
"Unix". It has not been anything connected with containing AT&T code
for 38 years.

Apple Mac OS X passed the certification and was this a Unix™.
Several Linux distributions have passed, including Euler OS and K-OS,
so yes, Linux is a Unix™ now.

Neither contains any AT&T UNIX code and they don't need to.

But yes, Linux is a 3rd party clean re-implementation of the UNIX API.

_However_ that API was published, as was the source code of Unix in
the first 6 or 7 versions. It was put out there so others could work
with it, and that includes copying it. There are multiple other
re-implementations of Unix. All of the BSD versions, QNX, Minix, MWC
Coherent, any many more, all are reimplementations. DEC's OpenVMS has
a POSIX-compatibility module, which is why DEC added "Open" to the
name. So does IBM z/OS. So does Windows NT -- the latest version is
called "Windows Services for Linux", WSL.

This was public information, widely available. OpenVMS and z/OS were
not really competitors.

CP/M's API was not public info, although in those early days most
companies did publish source code to enable software to be ported.
MS-DOS was not originally one of many rivals; it was pretty much the
*only* one on the PC platform. Nobody thought the PC would get so big.

I don't blame Tim Paterson. I don't think he did anything wrong; it
was fair enough. He did not plan to create a multi-billion-dollar
industry. He didn't plan to make Bill Gates the richest man in the
world. He didn't plan to crush DR, although I suspect MS did.

But he did take someone else's design, yes.

> I however don't think so. 'lifting' implies
> some unproper behaviour

That is why I used the word, yes.

> BTW: your original statement was
>
>   'Remember that in effect MS-DOS was an unlicensed copy of Digital
>Research's CP/M and particularly CP/M-86.'
>
> which was, is, and ever will be bullshit.

Yes. I said that, I meant it, and I stand by it.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[tom ehlert]

Hallo Herr Liam Proven,

am Freitag, 16. April 2021 um 13:44 schrieben Sie:

> On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 19:48, tom ehlert  wrote:
>>
>> that is simply not true. to start this sentence with 'Remember'
>> as in 'as everyone knows' is bullshit conspiracy tactics.

> I stand by it.

> As the late great Dr Gary Kildall said:

> "Ask Bill [Gates] why the string in [MS-DOS] function 9 is terminated
> by a dollar sign. Ask him, because he can't answer. Only I know that."

>  —  Gary Kildall Quoted in James Wallace and Jim Erickson
> (1991-05-08), "Bill Gates: Of Mind and Money", Seattle
> Post-Intelligencer

> Source: https://quotepark.com/authors/gary-kildall/

> The _design_ of SCP QDOS, and therefore IBM PC DOS, and therefore
> MS-DOS, was directly lifted from DR CP/M. That is why it was so
> compatible and why it was easy to port CP/M code to DOS on 8086.

you are talking about the MSDOS 1.0 API.
that's the way other programs talk to the OS; copying it was and is
considered fair game. nothing about 'lifting'.

and indeed most of MSDOS 1.0 API is a direct copy of CP/M, or at least
as similar as sensible.

   strings end with '$' (for whatever weird reason)

   JMP 5 terminates a program

   FCB functions use the same field


'design' usually refers to the internal way this API is implemented,
and was in no way copied.

> That is why it was DR was able to offer DR-DOS.
MSDOS 1.0 came out 1981. DRDOS 3.31 was published 1988.
and I really doubt it contains many lines from the CP/M code or even
the same internal organisation as CP/M as it
would be of little use for directories, memory allocation (segments) and more.


> That is why DR competed
> with MS by offering multitasking OSes (Concurrent CP/M, Concurrent
> DOS, FlexOS, Multiuser DOS) which could multitask DOS apps.

and was wildly successful doing this ;)

> I am not saying Paterson stole the code. I am saying he lifted the design.

if it's ok to say that linux lifted the design from unix you may
insist on saying this. I however don't think so. 'lifting' implies
some unproper behaviour

BTW: your original statement was

  'Remember that in effect MS-DOS was an unlicensed copy of Digital
   Research's CP/M and particularly CP/M-86.'

which was, is, and ever will be bullshit.

Tom



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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Thomas Desi]

Thank you, Mateusz!

Let’s save the planet with FreeDos!


> Am 16.04.2021 um 13:35 schrieb Mateusz Viste :
> 
> On 16/04/2021 13:15, Thomas Desi wrote:
>> this one= 66297 2009-09-11 18:42:08 fdapm-2009sep11.zip 
>>  on 
>> https://www.auersoft.eu/soft/ 
> 
> Yes.
> 
>> I read the fdapm.txt and notes but can’t figure out: does it go into 
>> CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC ?
> 
> It is a TSR, not a driver - hence you can set it through autoexec.bat, or 
> even run by hand from the command line.
> 
> Mateusz
> 
> 
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Mateusz Viste]

On 16/04/2021 13:15, Thomas Desi wrote:
this one= 66297 2009-09-11 18:42:08 fdapm-2009sep11.zip 
 on 
https://www.auersoft.eu/soft/ 


Yes.

I read the fdapm.txt and notes but can’t figure out: does it go into 
CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC ?


It is a TSR, not a driver - hence you can set it through autoexec.bat, 
or even run by hand from the command line.


Mateusz


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 19:48, tom ehlert  wrote:
>
> that is simply not true. to start this sentence with 'Remember'
> as in 'as everyone knows' is bullshit conspiracy tactics.

I stand by it.

As the late great Dr Gary Kildall said:

"Ask Bill [Gates] why the string in [MS-DOS] function 9 is terminated
by a dollar sign. Ask him, because he can't answer. Only I know that."

 —  Gary Kildall Quoted in James Wallace and Jim Erickson
(1991-05-08), "Bill Gates: Of Mind and Money", Seattle
Post-Intelligencer

Source: https://quotepark.com/authors/gary-kildall/

The _design_ of SCP QDOS, and therefore IBM PC DOS, and therefore
MS-DOS, was directly lifted from DR CP/M. That is why it was so
compatible and why it was easy to port CP/M code to DOS on 8086. That
is why it was DR was able to offer DR-DOS. That is why DR competed
with MS by offering multitasking OSes (Concurrent CP/M, Concurrent
DOS, FlexOS, Multiuser DOS) which could multitask DOS apps.

I am not saying Paterson stole the code. I am saying he lifted the design.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 18:40, Jim Hall  wrote:
>
> I encourage you to write articles about FreeDOS. Your outline (above)
> about DOS drive letters would probably be very interesting to a lot of
> readers on the right websites.

Thanks. I have posted it on my blog:
https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/79973.html

I am a professional technical writer these days, working for the
largest independent enterprise Linux vendor. It doesn't leave me a lot
of time.

I used  to be a technical journalist for about 20 years. I wrote for
PC Magazine, Mac User, PC Pro/PC @uthority, Computer Buyer, PC
Advisor, Network News, and most recently, I had a column in Custom PC
for its first year of publication, among many others. I was the editor
of Heise's UK website and a regular contributor to The Inquirer and
The Register.

Most of these have now closed down.

There's a list of my Register articles here:
https://search.theregister.com/?q=&advanced=1&author=liam+proven&date=the+dawn+of+time&results_per_page=100

I don't have much time for it any more as I'm a full-time writer and
editor, and also (at 53) a new dad with an 18-month-old daughter.

But thank you for the encouragement. :-)


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 18:30, Jim Hall  wrote:
>
> The "MS-DOS was a copy of CP/M" story is a myth. They both referenced
> other operating systems, and likely Tim Paterson referenced the CP/M
> manual when implementing some internal features of Q-DOS to create
> PC-DOS (then MS-DOS) but there's been code comparisons and binary
> analysis by several folks, and none that I'm aware of concluded that
> DOS was a copy of CP/M.
>
> Here's one example:
> https://www.embedded.com/was-dos-copied-from-cp-m/

I have looked into this in considerable depth and that article you
cite is based on a misunderstanding of the claims.

Nobody is saying that Paterson or SCP _copied code_ from CP/M into
QDOS. That is not the claim here, so that oft-cited article wastes a
lot of effort debunking the wrong claim based on misunderstanding the
allegation.

The claim is that Paterson re-implemented, from scratch, cleanly and
with his own code, the _design_ of CP/M.



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Re: [Freedos-user] DOS was dead...

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 21:57, Jon Brase  wrote:

I mostly agree with you. I would perhaps quibble with some details.

> Nope, I meant CPU. You start out with an unprotected CPU architecture like 
> the 8086. The OS is basically just a set of hardware access libraries that 
> applications can use or not as they wish (as they have direct access to the 
> hardware).

MS-DOS was so minimal that there is an argument that you can't call it
an OS at all. Many apps simply bypassed most of it and "hit the metal"
directly simply for speed; this is why "IBM PC compatible" became a
benchmark, and the MS Flight Simulator one of the acid tests of
compatibility. They are forgotten now, but there were once many MS-DOS
 computers that were not IBM-compatible. I personally worked on some
Apricot machines, but there were also Victor, Sirius and others, which
ran their own versions of MS-DOS but had totally different hardware
architectures, with ROM, I/O and video memory in different places in
the memory map. They could run clean legal DOS apps, but not IBM PC
apps... and in the end there were almost no clean legal DOS apps.

But it was a wider gamut than even that. A few of my employers'
customers ran Jarogate Sprite systems. The Sprite seems to be
forgotten by computer history; I can't find any Web coverage at all,
except passing mentions in 35-year-old magazine articles.

The Sprite was a small, desktop, x86 minicomputer. The machines had no
video adapter at all, not even text, and no keyboard interface. The
computers were totally headless; it was only possible to interact with
them via serial terminals. They had multiple RS-232 ports on the back
and could drive 4-16 dumb terminals -- typically Wyse-60 or similar
terminals. They ran DR Concurrent CP/M; each terminal got a DOS
prompt. They were used for things like multiuser accounts packages,
where each terminal ran an instance of the app, all sharing one global
shared set of files. In the early 1980s this was _much_ cheaper than a
set of separate computers and a network... each terminal was cheaper
than just a network card, let alone the PC with the network card in!

I helped with migrating data off one onto a Microchannel Apricot
server running SCO UNIX (the successor to SCO Xenix). The data files
were some hundreds of megabytes; the Sprite had a big hard disk for
the time, and a 1.2MB 5.25" floppy drive. We were glumly looking at
using about a hundred floppies, and of course, a single read-write
error would mean we had to start again.

I had a brainwave. I copied PK-Arc onto the Sprite with a floppy. It
was the forerunner to PK-Zip, and it was a DOS-legal app. It just did
console output; no graphics, no box-drawing, no cursor control. It ran
fine under CCP/M. I was able to compress the accounts data on the
Sprite, from hundreds of meg down to a few meg per file, and each file
only needed to be split into 2 or 3 parts to fit on a floppy. A task
we thought would take days was finished in a few hours... thanks to an
old clean, DOS-legal app.

The reason for this anecdote being that it partly falsifies your
statement that:

> (the 286, of course, didn't have a way of running 8086 code with protection 
> enabled)

It did. It was just very uncommon.

https://books.google.cz/books?id=2y4EMBAJ&pg=PA17&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://bidmeadia.blogspot.com/2006/05/surviving-big-blue.html

> it immediately opens up this can of worms, because back compatibility with 
> applications that access the hardware directly often requires that they 
> continue to be allowed hardware access, while system stability with multiple 
> legacy OS instances running tends to demand that they not be allowed hardware 
> access.

Once upon a time there were a set of specifications for processor
architectures to be able to run a hypervisor. They were called the
Popek & Goldberg requirements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popek_and_Goldberg_virtualization_requirements

x86-32 did not have them, so everyone thought x86 couldn't do it.

But by the late 1990s, companies were emulating the entire x86
instruction set: e.g. Connectix' Virtual PC for PowerPC Macs running
Classic MacOS let you boot and run a complete 386 PC OS, including
Linux, on a Mac.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix

It is not generally understood but this is how VMWare worked. They
emulated the 386 on the 386, or rather the Pentium. The emulator ran
Ring 2 stuff  directly on the metal and when it switched to Ring 0 for
hardware access, VMware just ran that code in its software x86
emulator.

That is how VMware virtualised an un-virtualisable architecture. And
since in a proper grown-up OS that makes use of protection levels
(e.g. Linux or WinNT), most of the time code is executing in Ring 2,
it was quite efficient and surprisingly fast.

I interviewed the founder and "lead scientist" of Connectix,  Jon
Garber, about porting VirtualPC from MacOS on PowerPC to Windows on
x86, and he said "it's very efficient. What you wa

Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Thomas Desi]

Mateusz, 
this one= 66297 2009-09-11  18:42:08fdapm-2009sep11.zip 
 on 
https://www.auersoft.eu/soft/

I read the fdapm.txt and notes but can’t figure out: does it go into CONFIG.SYS 
or AUTOEXEC ?

T h omas


> Am 16.04.2021 um 12:58 schrieb Mateusz Viste :
> 
> On 16/04/2021 12:53, Thomas Desi wrote:
>> Is there somebody who happens to know about the functionality (usability/) 
>> regarding DOSidle + FreeDos? Should I Autoexec.bat
> 
> FreeDOS comes with FDAPM, which provides a similar functionality (among other 
> interesting features). There is also an IDLEHALT kernel configuration (to be 
> set through CONFIG.SYS) that enables a subset of what FDAPM is capable of, 
> for those who do not wish to use a powersaving TSR.
> 
> Mateusz
> 
> 
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Mateusz Viste]

On 16/04/2021 12:53, Thomas Desi wrote:

Is there somebody who happens to know about the functionality (usability/) 
regarding DOSidle + FreeDos? Should I Autoexec.bat


FreeDOS comes with FDAPM, which provides a similar functionality (among 
other interesting features). There is also an IDLEHALT kernel 
configuration (to be set through CONFIG.SYS) that enables a subset of 
what FDAPM is capable of, for those who do not wish to use a powersaving 
TSR.


Mateusz


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Thomas Desi]

@TameDOS ist this like „DOSidle“?

I found „DOSidle", by Marton Balog, 1998, to reduce CPU load, i.e. also reduce 
power consumption of the cpu i guess.
There is a fix of a mouse bug by  „pm386" 
(https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=43384) : UPDATE Aug 12 2015: There is a 
new release DOSidle 2.51, which you can find here DOSidle new version 2.50 
(fixes mouse problems). Haven’t any experience with such add-ons in DOS-

Is there somebody who happens to know about the functionality (usability/) 
regarding DOSidle + FreeDos? Should I Autoexec.bat  
-T h omas




> Am 15.04.2021 um 18:40 schrieb JR :
> 
> 
> 
> On 2021/04/15 18:05, Liam Proven wrote:
>> On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 14:17, JR  wrote:
>>>  I run DOS under XP with
>>> "TAME" to stop 100% CPU usage.
>> I am curious -- how? In some sort of VM? MS VirtualPC is a free
>> download now... something like that?
> I've got the name wrong. It's TameDOS.
> Nope, not free. It appears to be still available at $20 from the author
> http://www.tamedos.com/tame/tamehome.htm
> 100% CPU usage on a notebook is very noisy with the fan running flat out.
> 
>> 
>>> and then Mark William's COHERENT.
>> Ah, that was an amazing OS in its day. So Unix-like, AT&T sent Dennis
>> Ritchie himself to the MWC offices to check it wasn't pirated. It
>> wasn't.
> I didn't know that ;-) Coherent was advertised in BYTE magazine and was very 
> reasonably priced at the time. It came with and impressive 1200 page plus 
> printed manual. When I moved to DOS, I think I used Kermit to transfer my 
> source files from Coherent to a DOS partition.
>> 
>> https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.computers/c/_ZaYeY46eb4/m/5B41Uym6d4QJ
>> 
>> It's FOSS now.
>> 
>> http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/
>> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [Freedos-user] DOS was dead...

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 18:50, Harald Arnesen  wrote:
>
> I would try Void Linux and Alpine Linux on such hardware.

Good points. Thanks for the tips -- to be honest I did not know they
supported x86-32.

I have tried both before, but only in VMs. Void Linux I quite liked:
very simple and clean, but seemed feature-complete and fast. Alpine I
found very challenging indeed; although I have seen a running instance
with a full Xfce desktop, I was not able to install the packages and
get a graphical desktop working on my test install. The documentation
is scant and patchy, and because it is a rolling-release, often what
docs are out there are outdated, and tell you detailed steps to
accomplish something that no longer work 6 months later.

This is one of the big strengths of Arch Linux: although it's a
rolling release, the documentation is lavish and exceptionally
complete.

The snag with rolling-release distros is that they are only suitable
for machines in constant use, where you can frequently update. They
are problematic on machines you may only use once every few months;
each time you turn the computer on, you need to do a massive update,
and because some subcomponents may change in major ways, things can
break.

I run openSUSE Tumbleweed on my machine in the office. I have been
working from home for over a year now. I think that when I finally
return to the office, it will be easier to reformat the machine and
start over than to update a year-old rolling release that has been
booted about 3 times in a year.

-- 
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Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com
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