Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Robert Riebisch]

Hi Eric,

> Hi Robert, thanks for the reviews and details :-)

You're welcome. :-)

> In short I suggest to add INFOPLUS, DOSZIP and DN to default install...

Big +1 from me.

 Once I received (TASM) source code for
 
 under "do whatever you want this it, but don't bug me".
> 
> Seems quite "benchmark oriented" (CPU, disk, RAM, PCI bus list etc.)

Yes, indeed. I forgot to mention that.

>> 1) It doesn't barf on Windows XP. COMPINFO always gives me RTE 205.
> 
> Internet says this is a floating point error if Turbo Pascal?
> Maybe trying to detect FPU in a way which upsets the protected
> mode host? How well does it behave with various (J-) EMM386?

I didn't have a look on the error.

>> 2) Here's a screenshot of the main window of MSD:
>> https://winuxinfocenter.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/msd1.png
> 
> That lists: BIOS string, base/EMS/XMS size, VGA string, network,
> kernel version, mouse version, joystick, drive letters, printer
> and serial ports, Win 3.x, IRQ, TSR, drivers. As everything has
> sub-menus, I guess it shows some BIOS-reported values, stats from
> the memory drivers, strings and screen modes from VGA BIOS, some
> unknown network details, mouse status details, stats about drive
> letters, maybe status flags and settings for serial and printer
> ports, which IRQ handler is in which area (BIOS, drivers etc.?)
> and shows some nice TSR and driver overview with more status in
> comparison to MEM output.

There was some official download from Microsoft once.
Search for, e.g, "GA0363.EXE", if you want to have closer look.

>> I prepared some screenshots: https://www.bttr-software.de/tmp/infoplus/
> 
> BIOS string, CPU ID, RAM ID, MEM, graphics ID, graphics modes,
> keyboard and mouse, parallel and serial ports, sound, DOS info,
> "multiplex programs", environment variables, device drivers,
> DOS and BIOS drive info, partition table, boot drive info, CMOS
> info, TSR and drivers, "alternate multiplex", memory managers.

Thanks for converting my shots into text.

> That sounds as if it is significantly better than MSD itself :-)

Yes.

Cheers,
Robert
-- 
  +++ BTTR Software +++
 Home page: https://www.bttr-software.de/
DOS ain't dead: https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Eric Auer]

Hi Robert, thanks for the reviews and details :-)

In short I suggest to add INFOPLUS, DOSZIP and DN to default install...

>>> Once I received (TASM) source code for
>>> 
>>> under "do whatever you want this it, but don't bug me".

Seems quite "benchmark oriented" (CPU, disk, RAM, PCI bus list etc.)

>  for an example.

>>> MSD is really nice for early hardware and easy to use.
>> Which features does it have which COMPINFO is lacking?
> 1) It doesn't barf on Windows XP. COMPINFO always gives me RTE 205.

Internet says this is a floating point error if Turbo Pascal?
Maybe trying to detect FPU in a way which upsets the protected
mode host? How well does it behave with various (J-) EMM386?

> 2) Here's a screenshot of the main window of MSD:
> https://winuxinfocenter.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/msd1.png

That lists: BIOS string, base/EMS/XMS size, VGA string, network,
kernel version, mouse version, joystick, drive letters, printer
and serial ports, Win 3.x, IRQ, TSR, drivers. As everything has
sub-menus, I guess it shows some BIOS-reported values, stats from
the memory drivers, strings and screen modes from VGA BIOS, some
unknown network details, mouse status details, stats about drive
letters, maybe status flags and settings for serial and printer
ports, which IRQ handler is in which area (BIOS, drivers etc.?)
and shows some nice TSR and driver overview with more status in
comparison to MEM output.

 https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/system/compinfo/
>>> - FOSS (GNU GPL & GNU LGPL)
>>> - it's already there
>>> - no docs
>>> - C and Pascal versions avaiable
>>> - "unfree" toolchain (Turbo Pascal)

> I dunno. I also couldn't get it to work in MS Virtual PC. Same RTE 205.

See above, floating point or EMM386 issue maybe?

>>> Also "unfree" toolchain (TP+ASM):
>>> INFOPLUS by Andrew Rossmann, last updated in 1993, public domain
>>> https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/simtelnet/msdos/sysinfo/ifp1p158.zip
>>> https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/simtelnet/msdos/sysinfo/ifp1s158.zip
>>> (binary, sources)
> It's very complete for it's time and is very similar to MSD.
> But because of it's age, it doesn't show anything about PnP, PCI

Neither does MSD, so INFOPLUS sounds very good.
I guess it also is a lot better than COMPINFO.

> I prepared some screenshots: https://www.bttr-software.de/tmp/infoplus/

BIOS string, CPU ID, RAM ID, MEM, graphics ID, graphics modes,
keyboard and mouse, parallel and serial ports, sound, DOS info,
"multiplex programs", environment variables, device drivers,
DOS and BIOS drive info, partition table, boot drive info, CMOS
info, TSR and drivers, "alternate multiplex", memory managers.

That sounds as if it is significantly better than MSD itself :-)

>> DOSZIP sounds like something to agree upon?
> Yes. It's small, fast, FLOSS.

Nice!

>> DOS Navigator, open source variant: Pros/Cons versus DOSZIP?

Pro: Editor, text screen grabber, calculator, calendar,
ASCII table, phone book, small spreadsheet, CD player,
flexible terminal, "navigator link", Tetris...

Very nice. I guess we could include both DOSZIP and DN OSP :-)

>> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/disk/
>>
>> has Ranish, XFDISK, SPFDISK and FDISK, even FIPS and file managers,
>> apparently incl. DOS Navigator (1.51, 2.14, no NDN any more?) while
>> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/file/
>> is where file managers should be and DOSZIP actually is, alone, now?

Cheers, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user]

OH! I guess I should've read the entire email, eh? lol


Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email.

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Saturday, May 15, 2021 3:22 PM, Robert Riebisch  
wrote:

> Hi Mercury,
>
> > > ...
> > > MSD?
> > > ...
> >
> > Microsoft System Diagnostics
> > A pretty handy little system evaluation tool Microsoft made back in the day.
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Diagnostics
>
> Thanks, but I know MSD, as you can see in my posting you replied to now.
>
> ###
>
> 2.  Here's a screenshot of the main window:
> https://winuxinfocenter.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/msd1.png
>
>
> ###
>
> I wrote "MSD?" (with a question mark), because I wasn't sure, if Eric
> referred to MSD or SPEEDSYS with his "it" in "Which features does it
> have which COMPINFO is lacking?".
>
> Cheers,
> Robert
>
> ---
>
>   +++ BTTR Software +++
>  Home page: https://www.bttr-software.de/
>
>
> DOS ain't dead: https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/
>
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user




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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Robert Riebisch]

Hi Mercury,

>> ...
>> MSD?
>> ...
> 
> Microsoft System Diagnostics
> 
> A pretty handy little system evaluation tool Microsoft made back in the day.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Diagnostics

Thanks, but I know MSD, as you can see in my posting you replied to now.

###
2) Here's a screenshot of the main window:
https://winuxinfocenter.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/msd1.png
###

I wrote "MSD?" (with a question mark), because I wasn't sure, if Eric
referred to MSD or SPEEDSYS with his "it" in "Which features does it
have which COMPINFO is lacking?".

Cheers,
Robert
-- 
  +++ BTTR Software +++
 Home page: https://www.bttr-software.de/
DOS ain't dead: https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user]

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Saturday, May 15, 2021 2:04 PM, Robert Riebisch  
wrote:

> ...
> MSD?
> ...

Microsoft System Diagnostics

A pretty handy little system evaluation tool Microsoft made back in the day.

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


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Robert Riebisch]

Hi Eric,

>> Once I received source code for
>> 
>> under "do whatever you want this it, but don't bug me".
>> 
>> I think, it's a 1.75 WIP version, so I'm not sure, it works or even
>> builds. (Requires TASM to build.)
>> 386+ required.
> 
> How well does it work? I think TASM is what that NoMySo (not my

I ran it in 2006 last time. See
 for an example.
(Change the encoding in your browser from Unicode to Western to avoid
"artifacts".)

As you can see, SPEEDSYS' output is more about hardware. It doesn't
report, e.g., country settings, environment variables, ...

> source) script can use as input to translate to free assemblers?

Yes, but I didn't try. Perl is not my thing.

>>> I remember that MS DOS came with MSD (and MEMMAKER, a wizard to
>> 
>> MSD is really nice for early hardware and easy to use.
> 
> Which features does it have which COMPINFO is lacking?

MSD?

1) It doesn't barf on Windows XP. COMPINFO always gives me RTE 205.
2) Here's a screenshot of the main window:
https://winuxinfocenter.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/msd1.png

>>> As you can guess, FreeDOS is missing cool apps here. How about
>>>
>>> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/system/compinfo/
>>>
>>> Would COMPINFO be sufficient?
>> 
>> Pros:
>> - FOSS (GNU GPL & GNU LGPL)
>> - it's already there
>> 
>> Cons:
>> - no docs
>> - C and Pascal versions avaiable
>> - "unfree" toolchain (Turbo Pascal)
> 
> I would not worry too much about the toolchain. How much
> work would it be to write documentation?

I dunno. I also couldn't get it to work in MS Virtual PC. Same RTE 205.

>> Also "unfree" toolchain (TP+ASM):
>> INFOPLUS by Andrew Rossmann, last updated in 1993.
>> License is public domain.
>> https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/simtelnet/msdos/sysinfo/ifp1p158.zip
>> (binary)
>> https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/simtelnet/msdos/sysinfo/ifp1s158.zip
>> (sources)
> 
> Nice license! How does it compare to MSD etc. feature-wise?

It's very complete for it's time and is very similar to MSD.

But because of it's age, it doesn't show anything about PnP, PCI, and
other newer stuff.

I prepared some screenshots: https://www.bttr-software.de/tmp/infoplus/

>> FM:
>> - DOSZIP
> 
> DOSZIP sounds like something to agree upon?

Yes. It's small, fast, FLOSS.

>> - DN OSP
> 
> DOS Navigator, open source variant: Pros/Cons versus DOSZIP?

More features:
* SmartPad editor
* (Text) screen grabber
* Memory and (tiny) system info
* Calculator
* Calendar
* ASCII table
* Phone book
* Spreadsheet
* CD player
* Terminal program (Xmodem, Kermit and similar)
* Navigator Link
* (Disk editor?)
* and: Tetris ;-)

>> PE:
>> - Ranish?
> 
> Maybe a bit too different? How about the classic XFDISK, SPFDISK,

You asked for. ;-)

> AEFDISK? I guess AEFDISK is more for scripts and SPFDISK is not
> part of the distro? How would you people like XFDISK then, in
> comparison to Ranish? I think XFDISK deserves an upgrade from
> being only on the Bonus CD. Ranish is not in the distro now?

Just ignore my previous vote. I didn't use any partitioning tools for a
long time.

> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/disk/
> 
> has Ranish, XFDISK, SPFDISK and FDISK, even FIPS and file managers,
> apparently incl. DOS Navigator (1.51, 2.14, no NDN any more?) while
> 
> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/file/
> 
> is where file managers should be and DOSZIP actually is, alone, now?

Not sure what "disk" and "file" mean from the content that's currently in.

For managing your *disk*'s content, you could use a file manager.
For managing *files*, one could use a file manager, of course.

But looking at
 it
seems, that "file" should be understood as "handling, i.e., viewing or
creating, files of different formats". We have 7zip, bzip2, dos2unix,
dospdf, info-zip, mupdf, sqlite, a WordStar converter, ...

It also has DUPLICIT ("Finds duplicite files on your disks"), locate,
search. These belong to file management like DN or DZ.

Either we need a third folder, or we move DUPLICIT, locate, search, DZ
to https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/file/
for the easy way.

By the way:
1)
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/file/linklib.zip
should go to
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/libs/

2) There is an UNSHIELD (InstallShield) in

, but a different one in


3)

should be moved to
.

4)

Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Eric Auer]

Hi Robert,

> Once I received source code for
> 
> under "do whatever you want this it, but don't bug me".
> 
> I think, it's a 1.75 WIP version, so I'm not sure, it works or even
> builds. (Requires TASM to build.)
> 386+ required.

How well does it work? I think TASM is what that NoMySo (not my
source) script can use as input to translate to free assemblers?

>> I remember that MS DOS came with MSD (and MEMMAKER, a wizard to
> 
> MSD is really nice for early hardware and easy to use.

Which features does it have which COMPINFO is lacking?
>> As you can guess, FreeDOS is missing cool apps here. How about
>>
>> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/system/compinfo/
>>
>> Would COMPINFO be sufficient?
> 
> Pros:
> - FOSS (GNU GPL & GNU LGPL)
> - it's already there
> 
> Cons:
> - no docs
> - C and Pascal versions avaiable
> - "unfree" toolchain (Turbo Pascal)

I would not worry too much about the toolchain. How much
work would it be to write documentation?

PS: would anybody want to donate work to update FreeDOS
MODE documentation? It still mentions "park disk", which
is a long-gone feature and does not yet mention codepage
and "modern text mode" support, see MODE /? for info:

https://gitlab.com/FDOS/base/mode/-/blob/master/DOC/MODE/MODE.TXT

> Also "unfree" toolchain (TP+ASM):
> INFOPLUS by Andrew Rossmann, last updated in 1993.
> License is public domain.
> https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/simtelnet/msdos/sysinfo/ifp1p158.zip
> (binary)
> https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/simtelnet/msdos/sysinfo/ifp1s158.zip
> (sources)

Nice license! How does it compare to MSD etc. feature-wise?

> There are probably more gems at https://www.sac.sk/files.php?d=13&l=

Happy gem-hunting! (insert game music here)

>> How about file managers? NDN (Necromancer's DOS Navigator at
>> ndn.muxe.com) apparently has closed sources, but even supports
>> 64-bit DPMI in DOS now? A free version of DOS NAVIGATOR, with
>> sources: https://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/dn/
>>
>> The https://sourceforge.net/projects/doszip/ Doszip Commander is
>> yet another Norton Commander clone, as is the open source CONNECT
>> shell from http://www.dorlov.no-ip.com/Connect/ Some of the file
>> managers already are packaged for FreeDOS distros on ibiblio:
> 
> I list some more on: https://www.bttr-software.de/links/#fileman
> 
>> So... Suggestions please :-) Which 1. SYSINFO TOOL, 2. FILE MANAGER
>> and 3. PARTITION EDITOR should be installed by default, used during
>> installation, be made available on the Live CD, etc.?
> 
> SI:
> - Info+
> - (one day...) System Speed Test
> 
> FM:
> - DOSZIP

DOSZIP sounds like something to agree upon?

> - DN OSP

DOS Navigator, open source variant: Pros/Cons versus DOSZIP?

> PE:
> - Ranish?

Maybe a bit too different? How about the classic XFDISK, SPFDISK,
AEFDISK? I guess AEFDISK is more for scripts and SPFDISK is not
part of the distro? How would you people like XFDISK then, in
comparison to Ranish? I think XFDISK deserves an upgrade from
being only on the Bonus CD. Ranish is not in the distro now?

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/disk/

has Ranish, XFDISK, SPFDISK and FDISK, even FIPS and file managers,
apparently incl. DOS Navigator (1.51, 2.14, no NDN any more?) while

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/file/

is where file managers should be and DOSZIP actually is, alone, now?

Cheers, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Robert Riebisch]

Hi Eric,

> Yes, I mean that post. However, I have only quoted part of
> the post and not mentioned the name because my impression
> was that just publicly shouting how horrible and disgusting
> FreeDOS is cannot be the start of a productive discussion:

ACK

> https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=17794
> 
> I do not think that FreeDOS 1.3 aims to be a competitor to
> Hiren or any of the Linux based "boot this and get a toolkit
> full of easy to use apps to repair your system" Live CDs.

+1

> However, FDISK obviously does look as ugly as the MS DOS 1990s
> version which makes it look horrible compared to GPARTED and
> very unfriendly to use compared to the average modern Linux
> installer which says "I see you have Windows 10 here, should
> I shrink the partition and install Linux next to it? Or is it
> okay to delete everything and use the whole drive for Linux?"
> with only a small footnote saying "if neither of those two
> choices are what you like, you can partition manually here".
> 
> I do NOT think that DOS can achieve that and I do NOT think
> that we should port GPARTED and all the tools which it calls
> in the background to DOS. Whoever wants to resize partitions
> for dual-booting DOS with Windows 10 can simply boot a Linux
> tool Live CD once. No worries, they are easy to use. And even
> then, DOS has no tools which would be able to automatically
> create a foolproof dual boot menu.

+1

> I had not been paying attention that Laaca advertised a system
> information screen in his own BLOCEK app here, but given that he
> has added that, he could also make a stand-alone sysinfo tool to
> include in the distro, for those who do not know that they have
> to look for that information inside a text editor.

Blocek is a 32-bit app. A good sysinfo tool should (also) run in 16-bit
real-mode on a 8088 CPU. Probably with a limited feature set.
Maybe it's easier to have separate versions. One for <386 PCs, because
of limited storage and a full-featured version for anything newer.

> Alternatively, which system information tools with suitable open
> source license could be included? As RayeR already wrote on BTTR,
> HWINFO (which? note the Linux open source one, I assume), NSSI
> (Navrátil Software System Information, mirrored on BTTR actually:
> http://www.bttr-software.de/freesoft/system.htm ), VC (NC style
> file manager, last update 2001?) etc. are not open source. BTTR
> also lists AIDA (benchmarks and sysinfo), PC Diagnostics, etc.

Once I received source code for

under "do whatever you want this it, but don't bug me".

I think, it's a 1.75 WIP version, so I'm not sure, it works or even
builds. (Requires TASM to build.)
386+ required.

> I remember that MS DOS came with MSD (and MEMMAKER, a wizard to

MSD is really nice for early hardware and easy to use.

I remember using Dr. Hardware very often, which is still around, but
still payware: https://www.dr-hardware.com/pghgretro.htm

Shareware version 10 for DOS (English):
http://www.drhardware.de/download/drhdose.zip

Shareware version 10 for DOS (German):
http://www.drhardware.de/download/drhdose.zip

> optimize your config/autoexec for TSR/driver order in UMB etc.)
> but I also remember that MSD was not particularily useful when
> you compared it to classics such as Quarterdeck Manifest MFT.
> 
> As you can guess, FreeDOS is missing cool apps here. How about
> 
> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/system/compinfo/
> 
> Would COMPINFO be sufficient?

Pros:
- FOSS (GNU GPL & GNU LGPL)
- it's already there

Cons:
- no docs
- C and Pascal versions avaiable
- "unfree" toolchain (Turbo Pascal)


Also "unfree" toolchain (TP+ASM):
INFOPLUS by Andrew Rossmann, last updated in 1993.
License is public domain.
https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/simtelnet/msdos/sysinfo/ifp1p158.zip
(binary)
https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/simtelnet/msdos/sysinfo/ifp1s158.zip
(sources)

There are probably more gems at https://www.sac.sk/files.php?d=13&l=

> How about file managers? NDN (Necromancer's DOS Navigator at
> ndn.muxe.com) apparently has closed sources, but even supports
> 64-bit DPMI in DOS now? A free version of DOS NAVIGATOR, with
> sources: https://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/dn/
> 
> The https://sourceforge.net/projects/doszip/ Doszip Commander is
> yet another Norton Commander clone, as is the open source CONNECT
> shell from http://www.dorlov.no-ip.com/Connect/ Some of the file
> managers already are packaged for FreeDOS distros on ibiblio:

I list some more on: https://www.bttr-software.de/links/#fileman

> So... Suggestions please :-) Which 1. SYSINFO TOOL, 2. FILE MANAGER
> and 3. PARTITION EDITOR should be installed by default, used during
> installation, be made available on the Live CD, etc.?

SI:
- Info+
- (one day...) System Speed Test

FM:
- DOSZIP
- DN OSP
- Explorer PC? -- Although it might 

Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Bryan Kilgallin]

Dear Jerome:

Time 
better spent improving things most users will appreciate. Things like 
adjusting installation paths and updating packages are more important to 
most people.


I found art software for Linux. It's powerful. But the user interface is 
crummy. And there's no documentation!

--
members.iinet.net.au/~kilgallin/


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Bryan Kilgallin]

Jerome:


Many people run FreeDOS on bare metal and their experience of installing the OS 
is extremely important.

However, the overwhelming vast majority of users do not do that. They install 
into one of the virtual machine platforms. Therefore, their experience should 
be prioritized.


FreeDOS 1.2 is the operating system on my Dell OptiPlex GX270 tower-PC.
--
members.iinet.net.au/~kilgallin/


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Eric Auer]

Hi! Thanks for clarifying that the installer always asks (and
hopefully explains) before choices with big consequences :-)

>> Do not tell ME, announce it during the install ;-)

> Based on my interpretation of the design constraints
> required for the installer, that ain’t gonna happen.

Not sure which constraints make offering a README hard,
but of course you can alternatively put the README and
a document viewer in the root directory and path of the
CD or USB image and a second copy of the README into
the ZIP downloads, accessible outside the images :-)

For "Our enemies bless us by telling us our weaknesses!":

I would like to say that it is important to exchange info
about problems and weaknesses. Luckily even our FRIENDS
do that. While I have deliberately paraphrased instead
of quoted Laaca's post when starting this thread to get
more friendly moods than "1.3 is horribly disappointing"
there is no reason to assume that Laaca dislikes DOS :-)

Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Jerome Shidel]

> On May 1, 2021, at 7:48 AM, Eric Auer  wrote:
> [..]
>  it should STILL first ask the user
> before installing DOS (pre-existing C: found) or creating
> a new partition

The installer ALWAYS asks if you want to partition when no DOS compatible 
partition can not be found.

The installer ALWAYS asks if you want to format when a DOS compatible partition 
for disk 1 (C: drive) is not readable.

The installer ALWAYS asks before installing the OS once the previous two 
conditions are satisfied.

Doing more than that and full manual control of many finer details are 
available in advanced mode.

> [..]
>>> Also the thing that CTRL+C can either open menu or kick you out?
> 
>> Like I said, only do it when it is waiting for user input.
> 
> Do not tell ME, announce it during the install ;-)

Based on my interpretation of the design constraints required for the 
installer, that ain’t gonna happen.

> [..]

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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[ZB]

On Sat, May 01, 2021 at 10:57:09PM +1000, Bryan Kilgallin wrote:

> Our enemies bless us by telling us our weaknesses!

It's not about supposed "weakness" of (Free)DOS; it's about weakness of that
"tester", who doesn't want to "waste" time learning. He doesn't want DOS; he
wants "kind of other Windows" rather, to "point and click".

Following him one could say that any OS (or any installer) not featuring
"user-friendly" GUI is trash and garbage. Maybe from his personal point of
view indeed it is -- because he's not willing (or simply unable) to learn
how to take advantage of command line.

DOS surely has some weaker points -- but surely you can't include into that
set command line use. It's feature, not bug/weakness. It's "just the way it
is". If he dosn't like it -- he can try for example Kolibri, it's
GUI-oriented from the very start. Allow DOS to stay DOS!
-- 
regards,
Zbigniew


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Bryan Kilgallin]

G'day Eric:


However, I have only quoted part of
the post and not mentioned the name because my impression
was that just publicly shouting how horrible and disgusting
FreeDOS is cannot be the start of a productive discussion:


Our enemies bless us by telling us our weaknesses!
--
members.iinet.net.au/~kilgallin/


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Eric Auer]

Hi Jerome, others,

of course suggestions are just suggestions and depend on
whether you have time to work on them and what others
think :-) Some feedback to you replies...

Given the point "slow boot, slow install, too few apps",
I still think Lite should not be too lite and Live should
have significantly more (pre-extracted) packages ready.

I think games which come on CD often are INSTALL FROM CD,
not RUN FROM CD, so being able to remove the Live CD to
run apps from CD still seems not that important for me.

Also, I think even when the installer THINKS that an easy
target drive exists, it should STILL first ask the user
before installing DOS (pre-existing C: found) or creating
a new partition table from scratch (apparent empty disk).

The "no drive writable for DOS" situation is likely to be
common in "only Linux or NTFS partitions exist yet" context
and the BEST recommendation in that case would be to ask
the user to *abort installation, use their pre-existing*
*Linux or Windows to resize their OS and add some LBA FAT*
partition and then start the installer again :-) Of course
it is fine to let the user decide to throw other OS away,
but I would display a very clear warning about that first.

>> Are tricks like those announced and well-visible during install?

> I’ve mentioned it numerous times here and in other venues.

It would be important to have such crucial information self-
contained inside the CD / USB image, in a readme which will
be included in the ZIP but outside the image and advertise
it automatically during the install process, I think.

Doing something which may or may not be what the user
wants, without documenting what is going on, is not
what I would advertise as "quick, easy, uncluttered".

> It is officially mentioned in only one place... run
> “setup /?” or (/h or /help or several other variants)

That is a start ;-)

>> Also the thing that CTRL+C can either open menu or kick you out?

> Like I said, only do it when it is waiting for user input.

Do not tell ME, announce it during the install ;-)

>> Unless you make a temp file in a small RAMDISK which you should
>> have anyway because pipelines in DOS actually are temp files ;-)
> 
> And how would that help logging the partitioning process???
> 
> Reboot, bye bye log.

Display the log, waiting for confirmation, before reboot:
Better than only doing things behind the screen or letting
each step scroll away while it happens. The user still gets
a good summary bundled at one moment of the first half of
the install process. Second half can log to target drive.

> I have plans for things of this sort and many other improvements.
> But all take some amount of time. Only so much of that available.

Luckily WHATIS and APROPOS are pre-existing DOS tools :-)

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Apr 30, 2021, at 12:36 PM, Eric Auer  wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Jerome, Laaca, others,
> 
> Given that I have verbose thoughts about Laaca's review and your
> […]
> versions. Lite ONLY exists for USB and I think it is TOO small.

Wether or not any of those ideas are good or bad, they all take some amount of 
time to research and/or implement. Some a few minutes, some hours and others 
longer. There is only so much time available. Time better spent improving 
things most users will appreciate. Things like adjusting installation paths and 
updating packages are more important to most people. And even replying to this 
email takes time.

> […]
> The Live version only exists for CD, why not for USB? And why
> do Live and Full (USB) or Legacy (CD) have to be separate
> downloads? Also, why not call it "Full CD", like "Full USB”?

As I said before, the Live Environment is a Live OS. It can have things 
installed into it without any need to write to or existence of a hard drive. 
What packages actually are pre-extracted or made live are always up for 
adjustment. Those choices are only made based on user convenience. It wastes 
most users time extracting (and disc space) pre-extracting and/or making 
“active” packages users will rarely use.

> 
> The purpose of a Live CD is that you can ENJOY APPS without
> having to install the operating system in question. If you
> only include BASE apps, you should call it "boot disk" ;-)

Like I said, it is a Live OS. Even if it was just base, it is far more than a 
boot disk. For all intents and purposes, there is only one difference between 
running the Live Environment and running an Installed to Hard Disk version. 
That difference is — Turn off or reboot and changes to the Live OS are reset. 
Now if you decide to make changes to your hard drive from the Live OS, that is 
your choice and those would persist across reboots. Otherwise, things like disk 
repair utilities would be of no use in the Live Environment.

>> Perhaps more software will be pre-extracted on the CD and
>> not made “active” on a RAM disk in 1.3-FINAL. However, this
>> has some trade-offs. You really can’t remove the CD...
> 
> It is still better to have (more) pre-extracted apps :-)

Completely disagree. Being able to remove the CD is a very good feature. You 
can boot the LiveCD. Yank the disc out. Put in a game or program disc that can 
run directly from CD and use it. Without being able to remove the disc, to run 
such programs would more or less require you to install the OS to the hard 
drive.

>> Some programs cannot be run on a read-only filesystem.
> 
> Which? Probably only a few apps would complain about that.

As I said, it would require testing each of them to ensure they did not have 
issues. More time and effort.

I have no idea what (if any) programs/packages provided with the FreeDOS 
release might require a writeable hard drive.
I do know I have seen many such programs in the past during my DOS days. 

>> Regardless, RC4 does a much better job than RC3 to auto partition
>> blank hard disks. On a clean system or VM, most users will no
>> longer even see FDISK.
> 
> To ME that sounds like "it will auto destroy ALL your data
> when it accidentally mis-detects the disk as being empty,
> without even asking you first!" :-o Please clarify.

As I said… On a CLEAN system it will usually be able to auto partition. 

If there is a drive writeable to DOS, neither partition or formatting occur and 
the installer goes straight to “install now”. On rare occasions, that in itself 
may not be what a user wants. The may have Windows 95 installed and want a new 
partition for FreeDOS. 

If there is no drive writable to DOS, the user is prompted by the installer 
wether or not you want it to partition the drive.

If running in advanced mode or detection cannot be performed or any partitions 
exist, auto partition does not occur and the user is thrown into FDISK.

If any user thinks their is any risk in letting DOS partition their drive, they 
should use other means to do so. 

> 
>> The easiest way to run in advanced mode is to exit the
>> installer and run “setup adv”. But, ... CTRL+C ...
> 
> Are tricks like those announced and well-visible during install?

I’ve mentioned it numerous times here and in other venues. 

Design implementation for a quick, easy and uncluttered install prevents such 
things during execution.

It is officially mentioned in only one place… run “setup /?” or (/h or /help or 
several other variants)

> Also the thing that CTRL+C can either open menu or kick you out?

Like I said, only do it when it is waiting for user input. Most people are used 
to such odd instructions from video game easter eggs, cheats and power moves. 
Things like “at the blah blah screen, press up up up left X down L2+R2 to 
enable god mode"

It could keep CTRL+C from throwing you out at other times. But, it is an power 
user feature. Most should just run “setup adv”.  

>> [..] There really is no way to store

Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Carsten Strotmann]

Hi,

On 30 Apr 2021, at 18:36, Eric Auer wrote:


I would like to hear opinions about FDISK, XFDISK, SPFDISK,
AEFDISK and RANISH partition managers from *everybody* :-)
They were all part of the 1.2 distro after all.


I'm a long time user of XFdisk and I prefer it over the plain FDISK. For 
the install process, providing XFDisk over FDISK would be a plus.


The FDISK should still be part of the base installation.

I have not used SPFDISK, AEFDISK and RANISH, so I cannot say anything 
about them.


Greetings

Carsten


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[ZB]

On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 05:18:11PM +0200, Eric Auer wrote:

> Which better SYSINFO utilities could we bundle? HWINFO, NSSI
> and VC probably are all closed source, what else is out there?

Disk Navigator?

But, actually, why are you so upset about this review? You won't please
the Windows' user; he expects "user-friendly OS" -- and "user friendliness"
he sees as the way Windows offer. So to sum up that review one can answer:
"...and what did you expect? It's DOS -- you have to learn at least some
basic skills to make any use out of it"
-- 
regards,
Zbigniew


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[TK Chia]

Hello Eric,


For comparison, at the moment, DOG (shell, 1 file per command),
Arachne (browser), Emacs, FreeBASIC, GhostScript, OpenXP, Lynx
browser, Pacific C, Pegasus Mail, SETEDIT and various games are
better off in their own directories, while several 100 single
executable files can nicely stay together in the BIN directory
because you would not want PATH to become too long in DOS.


The (newer) FreeDOS package format already has a links/ mechanism
(http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Package), which allows one to
create executable "shortcuts" in a links/ directory to programs elsewhere.

I am already using this mechanism in my gcc-ia16 packages.  E.g.
i16gcc.zip has a file links/i16gcc.bat, which (newer versions of) the
fdnpkg installer will transform into a small .com file that hands over
to devel/i16gnu/bin/i16gcc.exe.

I think this is a simple and straightforward way to keep %PATH% short,
and still allow each package's files to (largely) go into its own
directory.  Perhaps we just need to get more packages and package
maintainers to use it. :-)

Thank you!

--
https://gitlab.com/tkchia :: https://github.com/tkchia


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Eric Auer]

Hi Jerome, Laaca, others,

Given that I have verbose thoughts about Laaca's review and your
replies to it, I hope you have some time. Thank you for reading.

> Many people run FreeDOS on bare metal...
> 
> However, the overwhelming vast majority of users do not do that.

I guess "many" are still many enough to add a nice UHDD cache to
make the install significantly faster. Also, try something like
DIR /S > NUL to pre-cache directory data at some early moment.

As I never use DOSLFN or LFNDOS, I do not know whether they have
the need to become "better"? I think UDVD2 already is quite nice,
not sure what "ASPI driver" is about, maybe USB storage drivers?

A task switcher does not sound like a core feature given that the
"overwhelming vast majority" rund DOS inside one or more windows
inside some other operating systems anyway. We have TriDOS. Hmm.

It is good that the CD contains separate app package zips, but it
is still a good suggestion to pre-install MORE in the Live CD area,
so FEWER of them have to be unzipped while entering Live CD mode.

All packages which are pre-installed to a directory on the CD
1. make the CD larger but 2. do not have to be unzipped (slow)
into a ramdisk (where space is limited) :-)

Please DISABLE swapfiles in your installer cwsdpmi configuration!

You could only swap to ramdisk until the target drive is formatted
and ramdisk is too valuable to be used for swap if you ask me.

As far as I remember, we have package managers with built-in
unzip library. Not sure whether they show progress bars BUT
I think a progress info like "N out of N APPS unpacked" will
be sufficient to at least get an idea of the unpack progress.

Note that 7zip WILL give a progress indication and is part of
the distro anyway :-) Have not compared RAM use to unzip though.

As you explicitly want to support people with low (HOW low? Do
not overdo it!) amounts of RAM, I think it is again better to
have more pre-installed and fewer live-ramdisk-unzipped packages
for the Live CD. Even when this means you can squeeze fewer app
packages into 700 MB. You now only have 20 MB and 600 MB zip
download categories and separate Lite, Live, Legacy and Full
versions. Lite ONLY exists for USB and I think it is TOO small.

Basically nobody will be limited to a 32 MB USB stick. Better
make the "lite" version a BIT larger with more non-BASE apps.
Like 55 MB or 110 MB or something like that :-)

The Live version only exists for CD, why not for USB? And why
do Live and Full (USB) or Legacy (CD) have to be separate
downloads? Also, why not call it "Full CD", like "Full USB"?

The purpose of a Live CD is that you can ENJOY APPS without
having to install the operating system in question. If you
only include BASE apps, you should call it "boot disk" ;-)

> Perhaps more software will be pre-extracted on the CD and
> not made “active” on a RAM disk in 1.3-FINAL. However, this
> has some trade-offs. You really can’t remove the CD...

It is still better to have (more) pre-extracted apps :-)

> Some programs cannot be run on a read-only filesystem.

Which? Probably only a few apps would complain about that.

You could provide a SIMPLE batch script which, when there is
enough RAM, can be run by the user to copy all pre-extracted
apps into the ramdisk and update PATH. Then they can remove
the CD and still use all apps. But I think it is quite okay
that a Live CD wants to remain inserted into the CD drive.

I would like to hear opinions about FDISK, XFDISK, SPFDISK,
AEFDISK and RANISH partition managers from *everybody* :-)
They were all part of the 1.2 distro after all.

> Regardless, RC4 does a much better job than RC3 to auto partition
> blank hard disks. On a clean system or VM, most users will no
> longer even see FDISK.

To ME that sounds like "it will auto destroy ALL your data
when it accidentally mis-detects the disk as being empty,
without even asking you first!" :-o Please clarify.

> The easiest way to run in advanced mode is to exit the
> installer and run “setup adv”. But, ... CTRL+C ...

Are tricks like those announced and well-visible during install?
Also the thing that CTRL+C can either open menu or kick you out?

>> FDCONFIG.SYS. It is important because on the tested notebook (Dell
>> Latitude 610) the first two options did not work for me...

Which options are the first two? Probably those with EMM386? Is
it possible to use more "humble" default options to fix them?

> There really is no way to store a log of “the whole process”. 
> Anything prior to having a formatted hard disk will be lost.

Unless you make a temp file in a small RAMDISK which you should
have anyway because pipelines in DOS actually are temp files ;-)

I support the request that HELP offers a README or INSTALL file,
for example outlining the step by step phases of install, with
info which are optional, which are required and at which moments
the user can make which rough type of choices, so people know
what expects them and get an idea where they got stu

Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[tom ehlert]

> First, the amount of RAM available varies greatly making it an all or nothing 
> prospect.

> Second, unzip requires DMPI and wants HD swap. Unless the binary is
> somehow modified at boot, it will complain about no C drive swap.
> Also with no swap and limited RAM constraints, it is potential point of 
> failure.

just unzip base.zip, put the executables into a directory (\FDOS?) on the
CD/DVD, point PATH to it, and call it a day. it's hardly more then a
few MB.

absolutely not necessary to unpack on every boot.

Tom




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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Jerome Shidel]

Hi Eric,

I don’t know why I’m even responding to this forwarded “review”. But, I’ll 
assume the author will eventually see it. So, I’ll share some of my personal 
thoughts on some of it.

Most of it comes down to user preference. As is always the case, any decision 
will nearly always have some who disagrees and would have preferred another 
choice.  

Many people run FreeDOS on bare metal and their experience of installing the OS 
is extremely important. 

However, the overwhelming vast majority of users do not do that. They install 
into one of the virtual machine platforms. Therefore, their experience should 
be prioritized. 

> On Apr 29, 2021, at 9:15 PM, Eric Auer  wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi, forwarding a verbose update of the review from Laaca on BTTR :-)
> 
> My summary: Better LFN, faster disk I/O, problem of opening many small
> files on CD being slow (how about using more CACHE, Jerome? Maybe even
> with read-ahead or similar speed tricks?), problem of the Live CD not
> having apps pre-installed (it has to unzip them first), problem of the
> Live CD having too few apps available, lack of progress/status info,
> lack of analysis of existing system structure before install, lack
> (?) of ability to select install size (base, full etc.), lack of a
> mechanism to dual-boot on FAT (you know my opinion about that),
> lack of "what has been done where" summary log on the target drive,
> wish that running "help" should initially display an introduction
> or readme about what can be found where on the installed system,
> lack of utilities for manual installs and repairs in the live cd,
> wish for image viewer and mpxplay on live cd and default install,
> wish to add image editors, wish for descript.ion or similar method
> to let people know what zip contains what in the on-CD repository,
> wish to have separate directories for apps which are multiple files?

Do you want a better FreeDOS or a perfect one?

Active development resources dedicated to improving the OS are very limited. 

A better version (RC4) is coming any day now. (possibly even today or tomorrow)

If you want to wait for a perfect one that solves everyones problems, it will 
be a while. Like maybe the in the spring of 2150. In other words, never.


> The original update from Laaca on BTTR is below. Regards, Eric
> Source: https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=17804
> 
> Well, I wrote quite crititical review about FreeDOS 1.3rc. It was
> reposted into FreeDOS user forum and was few times commented and it is
> of course commented also here.
> Just to be clear - I don't complain about DOS as such but specificaly
> about FreeDOS 1.3rc and mainly about installer.
> I will try to summarize my criticism into several categories:
> 1) Missing DOS/FreeDOS features
> 2) FreeDOS live system from CD
> 3) FreeDOS installation
> 4) Help system
> 5) Packages
> 
> ad 1) Here is not much to say. I miss some feature in modern DOS system
> but it is not fault of the FreeDOS community. I would like to see a
> better LFN driver, better disk read/write/seek performance (much worse
> than f.e. under Win98). We do not have a good ASPI driver we do not have
> a good task switcher and so on and so on. But again, this is not the
> point of my criticism.

That is understandable and I completely agree. There are many such projects 
that the original authors brought to a certain point but for whatever reason 
stopped. Perhaps they lost interest and moved on to other things. Since they 
are open source, it doesn’t really matter. Someone who is interested in 
improving the software could pick up where the original author left off. As a 
developer of DOS related software, even the author of the original “review” 
post can do this. We can always use more help improving things.

> 
> ad 2) Why the booting starts with unzipping of many basic utilities like
> ATTRIB.ZIP, FORMAT.ZIP, COMP.ZIP and so on. Why it just does not unzip
> something like BASE.ZIP which would contain all this basic utilities?
> You forgot how slow is the file seeking on the CD on the real hardware?
> Sure, the contiuous read is fast on most of CD drives but seeking and
> opening the large amount of small files is a pain.

There actually many reasons the LiveCD Environment does things the way it does. 
But, I’ll stick to only some of the key reasons.

I’ve run it several times on real hardware. Yes it is slower. But with the 
current list of packages it makes “active", it isn’t actually that bad. 

The Live Environment actually was designed to do some of that already. If you 
pay close attention to the status of the packages as they are brought online, 
you will see a couple “skipped.” That status is displayed for packages that 
have already been made active by other means.

Earlier versions of the LiveCD had many more “skipped” packages. During the 
startup process, an entire group was done by extracting a single zip. This has 
several issues. 

First, the amount of RAM available varies greatly 

Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Mateusz Viste]

On 30/04/2021 02:19, Jon Brase wrote:
I'm not particularly attached to any particular GUI, or to having a GUI 
in FreeDOS per-se, but I'm a bit concerned, in terms of preserving 
historical software, that the Win16 API is not well served by existing 
options (Wine, NTVDM, MS-DOS/Win3 under virtualization, Win3 under 
DOSBox, etc), compared to the resources that are available for DOS, so 
I'd really like to see something I'll call "Free-point-one", a FOSS 
implementation of Win16 built on FreeDOS.


Isn't this possible already using the HX extender? It focuses mostly on 
running Win32 application from within DOS, but IIRC it also comes with 
some Win16 support.


Mateusz


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Eric Auer]

Hi, forwarding a verbose update of the review from Laaca on BTTR :-)

My summary: Better LFN, faster disk I/O, problem of opening many small
files on CD being slow (how about using more CACHE, Jerome? Maybe even
with read-ahead or similar speed tricks?), problem of the Live CD not
having apps pre-installed (it has to unzip them first), problem of the
Live CD having too few apps available, lack of progress/status info,
lack of analysis of existing system structure before install, lack
(?) of ability to select install size (base, full etc.), lack of a
mechanism to dual-boot on FAT (you know my opinion about that),
lack of "what has been done where" summary log on the target drive,
wish that running "help" should initially display an introduction
or readme about what can be found where on the installed system,
lack of utilities for manual installs and repairs in the live cd,
wish for image viewer and mpxplay on live cd and default install,
wish to add image editors, wish for descript.ion or similar method
to let people know what zip contains what in the on-CD repository,
wish to have separate directories for apps which are multiple files?

The original update from Laaca on BTTR is below. Regards, Eric



Source: https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=17804

Well, I wrote quite crititical review about FreeDOS 1.3rc. It was
reposted into FreeDOS user forum and was few times commented and it is
of course commented also here.
Just to be clear - I don't complain about DOS as such but specificaly
about FreeDOS 1.3rc and mainly about installer.
I will try to summarize my criticism into several categories:
1) Missing DOS/FreeDOS features
2) FreeDOS live system from CD
3) FreeDOS installation
4) Help system
5) Packages

ad 1) Here is not much to say. I miss some feature in modern DOS system
but it is not fault of the FreeDOS community. I would like to see a
better LFN driver, better disk read/write/seek performance (much worse
than f.e. under Win98). We do not have a good ASPI driver we do not have
a good task switcher and so on and so on. But again, this is not the
point of my criticism.

ad 2) Why the booting starts with unzipping of many basic utilities like
ATTRIB.ZIP, FORMAT.ZIP, COMP.ZIP and so on. Why it just does not unzip
something like BASE.ZIP which would contain all this basic utilities?
You forgot how slow is the file seeking on the CD on the real hardware?
Sure, the contiuous read is fast on most of CD drives but seeking and
opening the large amount of small files is a pain.
And after this we have only very bare system with only few
applications/utilities. It is much worse than very ancient Live CD of
FreeDOS 0.9a which I have and occasionaly use (although it is also a
.BAT files complicated mess). In 0.9 it ended in rather primitive menu
system but working system which allowed many tasks. Even much better is
Hiren boot CD. I heard that it is based on Linux or Windows. But I have
a completely different experience. I have a older version (Hiren 9.5?)
which is DOS based. The boot proces ends in quite nice menu sorted into
categories and subcategories which instantly allow quite wide spectrum
of useful things what to do in DOS.

ad 3) Installer should be generaly much more user friendly and should
inform a user about the process. It would be nice if it could perform a
system scan in the begining and resume the system from point of view of
DOS compatibility.
Like "Warning, no IDE/ATAPI interface, optical drives will not work" or
"Your processor does not support a 32-bit protected mode - the install
set will be adjusted for it".
In case when some existing disk partitions are present it should offer
the installation of boot manager (preferably BootMGR by BTTR software).
FDisk should be replaced by some better alternative.
Also - the user should be prompted to choose a variant of installation
(very basic, extended, full) and also a list of desired applications via
a expandable list for custom modifications of the options above.
I like the point that current installer creates a multi configuration
FDCONFIG.SYS. It is important because on the tested notebook (Dell
Latitude 610) the first two options did not work for me and only the
other options were working.
And finally - after the installation must be displayed (and also saved
into some protocol file) some summarization of whole process.


ad 4) Help system must be totaly reworked. After writing "help" should
be displayed some overview like:
* FreeDOS core files and installed into C:\ and C:\FDOS\BIN. Other
available disks are: .
* For your convience are prepared these BAT scripts
- for filemanager write "dz"
- for system info write "sysinfo"
- for more info about applications in C:\EDITORS write "help editors"
- for more info about applications in C:\SOUND\ write "help sound"
...
- for more info about DOS core utils and DOS batch language write "help dos"

ad 5) In harddisk mode and live CD mode must be easily available
utilities for syste

Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Apr 29, 2021, at 2:09 PM, Harald Arnesen  wrote:
> 
> Deposite Pirate [29.04.2021 19:20]:
> 
>> April 29, 2021 6:32 PM, "geneb"  wrote:
>>> On the surface of it, he's apparently asking for a "windows experience" in 
>>> a text mode operating
>>> system. DOS isn't a "point and drool your way to fame and fortune" 
>>> operating system. If he thinks
>>> this is bad, he'd have a stroke when presented with a non-graphical UNIX 
>>> system. ;)
>> 
>> The FreeDOS install system is the worst I've ever seen of all DOSes because 
>> it's merely a bunch of
>> batch scripts (which are going to be slower) and not a proper C or assembly 
>> program like DR/PC/MS-DOS.

Because all it’s logic is in some batch files?

Multi-languages, multiple themes, advanced mode and on and on and on. As batch 
scripts go, it pushes the limits of what can be done. 

Sure the installer could have been done in assembly or one of the HLLs. But, it 
was asked to be done as a batch with only
a few simple questions. The funny part is -- there were several people that it 
couldn’t even be done at all. But, there it is and it works well enough. 

> 
> I shouldn't think that would matter much. Most of the time is spent on
> unzipping the various programs anyway.
> -- 
> Hilsen Harald

Yup, mostly.

However it should be noted that depending on the hardware and install media 
used, installation time can very a lot. For example, I can do a FULL install of 
RC4 (coming soon) to a completely blank VM in VirtualBox (including 
partitioning) from the LiveCD in under a minute. If I use the FullUSB and its 
VMDK attached as a HD, it is even faster (although I probably spend 2 minutes 
changing VM settings and such after the install). VMware fusion is almost as 
fast. QEMU on the other hand is kinda slow probably 2-3 minutes and a FULL 
install takes longer. But then again, I was running QEMU on Linux inside a 
VirtualBox instance on an older Mac. Your results may very.

What it comes down to is this: Like any program, performance will vary based on 
your computer system.

Jerome



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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Jon Brase]

On 4/29/21 4:57 PM, Jim Hall wrote:

We could bolt on a graphical desktop environment onto FreeDOS, but the
"graphical desktop" discussion never goes anywhere. Some people want
*this* GUI and others want *that* GUI. We have three graphical
desktops for FreeDOS: SEAL, oZone and OpenGEM. None are actively
maintained, but OpenGEM is the most mature. When I demo'd SEAL and
oZone for the YouTube channel, I found lots of bugs still present in
both of these desktop environments. So I'd hesitate to promote either
of those as "the one and only" FreeDOS graphical desktop.


I'm not particularly attached to any particular GUI, or to having a GUI 
in FreeDOS per-se, but I'm a bit concerned, in terms of preserving 
historical software, that the Win16 API is not well served by existing 
options (Wine, NTVDM, MS-DOS/Win3 under virtualization, Win3 under 
DOSBox, etc), compared to the resources that are available for DOS, so 
I'd really like to see something I'll call "Free-point-one", a FOSS 
implementation of Win16 built on FreeDOS. I imagine that you probably 
regard it as out of scope for FreeDOS, and in any case it's late for 
such a project to get started, but given the history of the Win16 API, 
it's a very DOS-adjacent problem, if you know what I mean.




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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Jim Hall]

On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 5:39 PM geneb  wrote:
>[..]
> > OpenGEM is nice and I believe it is quite mature. And being based on
> > DR-DOS GEM (and the Atari TOS) the OpenGEM user interface should be
> > somewhat familiar to old-school DOS users. I like OpenGEM, as much as
> > I might like any DOS graphical desktop.
[..]
>
> Preaching to the choir - I got it open sourced in '97. ;)
>
> g.
>

:-)


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[geneb]

On Thu, 29 Apr 2021, Jim Hall wrote:


We could bolt on a graphical desktop environment onto FreeDOS, but the
"graphical desktop" discussion never goes anywhere. Some people want
*this* GUI and others want *that* GUI. We have three graphical
desktops for FreeDOS: SEAL, oZone and OpenGEM. None are actively
maintained, but OpenGEM is the most mature. When I demo'd SEAL and
oZone for the YouTube channel, I found lots of bugs still present in
both of these desktop environments. So I'd hesitate to promote either
of those as "the one and only" FreeDOS graphical desktop.

Realistically, OpenGEM/FreeGEM don't *need* to be maintained.  They're 
feature-complete.



OpenGEM is nice and I believe it is quite mature. And being based on
DR-DOS GEM (and the Atari TOS) the OpenGEM user interface should be
somewhat familiar to old-school DOS users. I like OpenGEM, as much as
I might like any DOS graphical desktop. Even so, I'm not convinced
that FreeDOS needs to install a default GUI. A graphical desktop
doesn't really help you to run DOS programs. For example: when you
launch a "plain" DOS application from OpenGEM, you leave the graphical
environment. It's not like Linux or Windows where the DOS application
starts up in a "window" while you do other OpenGEM things.


Preaching to the choir - I got it open sourced in '97. ;)

g.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Jim Hall]

On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 11:31 AM geneb  wrote:
>[..]
> On the surface of it, he's apparently asking for a "windows experience" in
> a text mode operating system.  DOS isn't a "point and drool your way to
> fame and fortune" operating system.  If he thinks this is bad, he'd have
> a stroke when presented with a non-graphical UNIX system. ;)
>

Let's keep this a respectful conversation and not start a "point and
drool" grudge match. :-)

Like any DOS, FreeDOS has always been a single-user "single task"
command line operating system. FreeDOS is not trying to create the
next "Windows" or become the next "Linux." FreeDOS is DOS, and that
includes all the limitations that come with DOS.

We could bolt on a graphical desktop environment onto FreeDOS, but the
"graphical desktop" discussion never goes anywhere. Some people want
*this* GUI and others want *that* GUI. We have three graphical
desktops for FreeDOS: SEAL, oZone and OpenGEM. None are actively
maintained, but OpenGEM is the most mature. When I demo'd SEAL and
oZone for the YouTube channel, I found lots of bugs still present in
both of these desktop environments. So I'd hesitate to promote either
of those as "the one and only" FreeDOS graphical desktop.

OpenGEM is nice and I believe it is quite mature. And being based on
DR-DOS GEM (and the Atari TOS) the OpenGEM user interface should be
somewhat familiar to old-school DOS users. I like OpenGEM, as much as
I might like any DOS graphical desktop. Even so, I'm not convinced
that FreeDOS needs to install a default GUI. A graphical desktop
doesn't really help you to run DOS programs. For example: when you
launch a "plain" DOS application from OpenGEM, you leave the graphical
environment. It's not like Linux or Windows where the DOS application
starts up in a "window" while you do other OpenGEM things.


Jim


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Eric Auer]

Hi Jim,

>> https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=17794

Of course, fresh replies keep coming in there, too :-)

> 1. Ugly FDISK
> 2. LiveCD is unusable

The Live CD is not useful as "Boot and get tools" CD, but
I am not sure whether that is the goal. However, just "Boot
as if you had put a DOS boot disk into your floppy drive"
would really miss most of the opportunities of having more
space on CD, even if you want to be humble. Do not be TOO
humble.

> 3. After installation, the installer doesn't set up a GUI
> or even a file manager by default

It seems the installation is BASE only. Again, only putting
alternatives for those things on a whole target harddisk
partition which you would have gotten from 3 floppies full
of MS DOS does not match the vast space even of a 20 year
old computer. We do not need th

> 4. Complaints about the programs and utilities, and how
> they are organized

By the way, there could be more "luring me into the LSM HTML
overview" for example at the root directory of the IBIBLIO
category directories of our classic package collection which
you link directly from http://freedos.org/download/ ==>
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/
because there are no readme files or anything similar. Only
the inconspicuous "What's included" link, but not the big
colored "FreeDOS files archive" link gives you orientation:

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/repos/pkg-html/index.html

Good to know that FreeDOS 1.3rc4 will bring improvements :-)

About FDISK, what are YOUR thoughts about xfdisk, spfdisk, ranish?

> - Compatibility is key.
> - FreeDOS 1.3 will remain 16-bit.

Nothing stops you from including 32-bit apps like DOSFSCK
in particular on a CD ISO which is almost impossible to
boot on 16-bit hardware anyway. You can limit stripping
down things to 16-bit only to the floppy edition of 1.3,
which should ALSO make KSSF loading for FreeCOM available
as normal XMS swap FreeCOM is a big memory hog on systems
which do not provide XMS. Of course, please also include
both FDXMS286, 8086-compatible (but FAT32-enabled?) kernel
and the 386+ EMS/XMS drivers there. After all, even 386
computers are still hard to boot from CD/DVD drives.

> - FreeDOS 1.3 will retain focus on a single-user command-line environment.

Agreed, no need to default-install a GUI and most GUIs are
somewhat large so the could be reserved to larger versions
of the ISO. Still nice to have a big ISO with plenty BUT
not all apps to have a good pile of apps without requiring
additional separate downloads :-)

> - FreeDOS 1.3 will continue to run on old PCs
> (XT, '286, '386, etc)

In particular the floppy edition. There is not much point
to say the CD edition is not allowed to require e.g. 16 MB
of RAM for cache and RAMDISK in a world where only such PC
which cannot boot a CD at all have less than that amount.

> but will support new hardware with expanded driver support,
> where possible.

Sure!

> - The "Base" package group will contain everything that
> replicates the functionality from MS-DOS.

YES, as a means of organizing stuff, but NO, the CD ISO
edition should make it very clear that BASE is only for
minimalists and it should already include MORE than BASE
ready for install without requiring additional downloads.

Also, the Live CD mode should already have a bit more
than BASE, but it could work with "unzipping selected
packages to a RAMDISK of maybe 12 or 128 MB" if we want
to avoid to include packages twice (packaged and live).

> I don't see turning FreeDOS into a "mini-Windows" or a "mini-Linux."

Indeed.

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Jim Hall]

On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 11:55 AM Eric Auer  wrote:
>
>
> Hi TK Chia,
>
> > Apparently the review was from Laaca --- the author of Blocek.
>
> Yes, I mean that post. However, I have only quoted part of
> the post and not mentioned the name because my impression
> was that just publicly shouting how horrible and disgusting
> FreeDOS is cannot be the start of a productive discussion:
>
> https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=17794
>

Yes, my impression of Laaca's post was that it was mainly venting. And
I see a few replies on Laaca's BTTR post that suggest that.

Yet, feedback is useful. But sometimes you have to dig a little deeper
to understand what the feedback is actually trying to say. Reading
through Laaca's post, it seems the major complaints about FreeDOS 1.3
RC3 are:

1. Ugly FDISK
2. LiveCD is unusable
3. After installation, the installer doesn't set up a GUI or even a
file manager by default
4. Complaints about the programs and utilities, and how they are organized


And there are some valid complaints there. But I think the "coming
soon" FreeDOS 1.3 RC4 addresses some of these (I've been working with
Jerome on RC4, especially in doing a package review). The RC4 LiveCD
environment is much better. And the organization of the programs and
utilities is also improved.

Yes, FDISK is the plain black-and-white version of FDISK we've always
had. It's also virtually identical to MS-DOS FDISK. It would be really
nice to have an updated FDISK program, one that is a little friendlier
than plain FDISK. I imagine a tool similar to Disk Druid

would be easier for folks to use and would still feel like "DOS."
Probably the best way to create this kind of tool is to fork FDISK, to
take advantage of Tom's recent bug fixes in FDISK. But as Tom
discovered when he updated FDISK to fix several partition bugs, the
FDISK source code is really ugly and needs a *lot* of cleanup. This
could be a really interesting project for a developer with some DOS
experience. I'll update the "Contribute" page with this idea.

I think we've been clear about #3, though. FreeDOS is DOS, and every
time this discussion comes up, the email list community is clear: we
prefer FreeDOS to be more like classic DOS. I captured those
sentiments in the FreeDOS wiki when describing the goals and core
assumptions for FreeDOS 1.3:

- Compatibility is key.
- FreeDOS 1.3 will remain 16-bit.
- FreeDOS 1.3 will retain focus on a single-user command-line environment.
- FreeDOS 1.3 will continue to run on old PCs (XT, '286, '386, etc)
but will support new hardware with expanded driver support, where
possible.
- The "Base" package group will contain everything that replicates the
functionality from MS-DOS.

I don't see turning FreeDOS into a "mini-Windows" or a "mini-Linux."
Yes, we include a number of Unix-like tools, but we also include a
bunch of other tools and programs that are very DOS-like.


> I had not been paying attention that Laaca advertised a system
> information screen in his own BLOCEK app here, but given that he
> has added that, he could also make a stand-alone sysinfo tool to
> include in the distro, for those who do not know that they have
> to look for that information inside a text editor.

I did not realize there was a system information function inside
Blocek, either.* I agree this would be interesting to pull out as a
separate tool so users can see it.

We used to have a Compinfo tool in FreeDOS (the one you mentioned
below) but it has not been maintained in a very long time. Would be
interesting to try it again, to see how well it works compared to
Blocek's system information feature.

> Alternatively, which system information tools with suitable open
> source license could be included?
[..]
> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/system/compinfo/
>
> Would COMPINFO be sufficient?
>

-Jim


* I don't use Blocek as my text editor, so I hadn't seen the system
information feature. Blocek requires graphics mode and a mouse, which
is too much when all I want to do is edit text. And Blocek's key
bindings seem incomplete compared to other editors; I don't know how
to select text with the mouse or via the keyboard. But my DOS text
editing needs are simple (I use FED to write code, and FreeDOS EDIT
for everything else) so maybe I am not the right user for Blocek.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 29 Apr 2021 at 22:00, Eric Auer  wrote:
>
> there have been TSR to display a clock or other status in DOS,
> at a selectable location or by reserving a whole line on screen.

The clock is a lot easier than the battery level, though... But I
guess there are probably standard APM calls to query remaining battery
power. I always load POWER.EXE when running PC/MS/DR DOS in VMs,
because it makes the CPU usage drop to zero when the VM is idle. I
think it (or analog) might support a how-much-charge-is-left call but
I don't know.

> About your suggestion to show which drives exist at boot: The
> installer could use VOL, a FOR loop and testing whether or not
> a drive exists to display such information. There also are some
> left-over tools from older versions of the distro to check which
> drives are CD/DVD, which are FAT12, FAT16 or FAT32, how much
> space is free on them and so on.

Yup. A simple list would help.
>
> The output of MEM is so long (shortest style is without /C I think)
> that you would not fit much else on the screen. Same for the output
> of LBACACHE (when loading, or using the INFO or STAT options later).

There's always `mode con lines=43` or `mode con: lines=50` :-)

> The good thing about VER /R is that it shows both kernel and command.com
> version in 3 lines (plus one empty line before that). As people probably
> use UHDD+UDVD2 instead of LBACACHE+?+CDRCACHE, cache info will differ.

Well, yes.

> What would be the pros and cons relative to the already existing DOS
> versions of Ranish, fdisk, xfdisk and spfdisk?

Ahh, good point. Like I said, I generally stick to the on-board tools
in PC/DR DOS, without 3rd party additions. I wasn't aware of these,
except Ranish, which is the only tool I know that can renumber
existing partitions in place. I am not sure I've used it this century,
though.

> > I have long been pondering a very simple, very heavily cut-down,
> > text-only Linux whose main purpose was to multitask multiple instances
> > of DOSemu
>
> Too late? ;-) https://cmaiolino.wordpress.com/dosbian/

Well, no, but good find!

That's an ARM distro, not x86. It runs DOSbox, a PC emulator, whereas
DOSemu runs DOS sessions on the bare metal of x86 machines. DOSbox is
mainly aimed at games, whereas DOSemu is intended for productivity
apps, and allows reading files on Linux partitions, printing to Linux
printers, etc.

But conceptually close!

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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Eric Auer]

Hi Liam,

there have been TSR to display a clock or other status in DOS,
at a selectable location or by reserving a whole line on screen.

About your suggestion to show which drives exist at boot: The
installer could use VOL, a FOR loop and testing whether or not
a drive exists to display such information. There also are some
left-over tools from older versions of the distro to check which
drives are CD/DVD, which are FAT12, FAT16 or FAT32, how much
space is free on them and so on.

I myself have the 4 kB VOLINFXL tool which shows the NAME, SIZE,
USED and FREE space of all drives. You can find a copy e.g. on
http://ericauer.cosmodata.virtuaserver.com.br/soft/specials/

> I always put a few commands in at the end of AUTOEXEC.BAT to display
> the disk cache size (SMARTDRV /V on PC DOS), the amount of free base
> memory (MEM /C), and the DOS version (VER /R). A list of available
> drives would be a really nice addition.

The output of MEM is so long (shortest style is without /C I think)
that you would not fit much else on the screen. Same for the output
of LBACACHE (when loading, or using the INFO or STAT options later).

The good thing about VER /R is that it shows both kernel and command.com
version in 3 lines (plus one empty line before that). As people probably
use UHDD+UDVD2 instead of LBACACHE+?+CDRCACHE, cache info will differ.

> For a more friendly FDISK, it might be possible to adapt the Linux
> `cfdisk` tool...

What would be the pros and cons relative to the already existing DOS
versions of Ranish, fdisk, xfdisk and spfdisk?

> I have long been pondering a very simple, very heavily cut-down,
> text-only Linux whose main purpose was to multitask multiple instances
> of DOSemu

Too late? ;-) https://cmaiolino.wordpress.com/dosbian/

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Harald Arnesen]

Deposite Pirate [29.04.2021 19:20]:

> April 29, 2021 6:32 PM, "geneb"  wrote:
>> On the surface of it, he's apparently asking for a "windows experience" in a 
>> text mode operating
>> system. DOS isn't a "point and drool your way to fame and fortune" operating 
>> system. If he thinks
>> this is bad, he'd have a stroke when presented with a non-graphical UNIX 
>> system. ;)
> 
> The FreeDOS install system is the worst I've ever seen of all DOSes because 
> it's merely a bunch of
> batch scripts (which are going to be slower) and not a proper C or assembly 
> program like DR/PC/MS-DOS.

I shouldn't think that would matter much. Most of the time is spent on
unzipping the various programs anyway.
-- 
Hilsen Harald


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 29 Apr 2021 at 18:17, Johnpaul Humphrey  wrote:
>
> I do not know about SYSINFO. I do not use it too much. having a way to
> check battery would be good on laptop.

I guess this is part of the problem. We forget how things are on a
multitasking OS.

There used to be a very obscure OS called Digital Research DOS Plus.

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

It was an ancestor of DR-DOS, but before DR had the idea of doing a
rival to MS-DOS. DOS Plus was descended from Concurrent CP/M, but was
a single-user system with some, very limited, MS-DOS compatibility. In
the UK it was shipped with the first Amstrad PCs (Europe's first cheap
PC clones) and Acorn's BBC Master 512, an educational Mostek 6502
computer with an Intel 80186 co-processor.

The most visible difference between DOS Plus and any other DOS was
that DOS Plus displayed a status line at the bottom of the screen,
showing the time, what if anything was printing in the background,
which of its 4 screens you were on and some other info. It could
multitask CP/M-86 programs, but not DOS ones.

But without multitasking, how could you display a battery monitor? On
DOS, nothing can "run in the background" because there is no
background to run in.

In principle it could be in the prompt, but apart from the time, there
is no mechanism to _dynamically_ update an environment variable to
hold a changing value. One could write a TSR to do it (I think!) but
that is more precious base memory used up.

The one thing I can think of is that in DOSemu in Linux, when you
start a session, it lists the available drives and what they are
mapped to.

I always put a few commands in at the end of AUTOEXEC.BAT to display
the disk cache size (SMARTDRV /V on PC DOS), the amount of free base
memory (MEM /C), and the DOS version (VER /R). A list of available
drives would be a really nice addition.

For a more friendly FDISK, it might be possible to adapt the Linux
`cfdisk` tool, a menu-driven disk-partitioner, but it seems to have
more risk than benefit. Since DOS cannot by default access or display
drives formatted with NTFS, HPFS, ext2/3/4, XFS, Btrfs, ZFS etc., then
a friendly partitioner that makes it easy to remove drives whose
contents you can't see is asking for trouble. Better to boot a Linux
CD and use GParted.

I have long been pondering a very simple, very heavily cut-down,
text-only Linux whose main purpose was to multitask multiple instances
of DOSemu -- making it work like DESQview or something in the late
1980s/early 1990s. An OS in the tens of megabytes, worst case a few
hundred megs, which let you multitask DOS apps at full native speed.
(I.e. unlike DOSbox or some other emulator).

It might be both fun and useful, but it's not really DOS any more...


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Deposite Pirate]

April 29, 2021 6:32 PM, "geneb"  wrote:
> On the surface of it, he's apparently asking for a "windows experience" in a 
> text mode operating
> system. DOS isn't a "point and drool your way to fame and fortune" operating 
> system. If he thinks
> this is bad, he'd have a stroke when presented with a non-graphical UNIX 
> system. ;)

The FreeDOS install system is the worst I've ever seen of all DOSes because 
it's merely a bunch of
batch scripts (which are going to be slower) and not a proper C or assembly 
program like DR/PC/MS-DOS.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Eric Auer]

Hi TK Chia,

> Apparently the review was from Laaca --- the author of Blocek.

Yes, I mean that post. However, I have only quoted part of
the post and not mentioned the name because my impression
was that just publicly shouting how horrible and disgusting
FreeDOS is cannot be the start of a productive discussion:

https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=17794

I do not think that FreeDOS 1.3 aims to be a competitor to
Hiren or any of the Linux based "boot this and get a toolkit
full of easy to use apps to repair your system" Live CDs.

However, FDISK obviously does look as ugly as the MS DOS 1990s
version which makes it look horrible compared to GPARTED and
very unfriendly to use compared to the average modern Linux
installer which says "I see you have Windows 10 here, should
I shrink the partition and install Linux next to it? Or is it
okay to delete everything and use the whole drive for Linux?"
with only a small footnote saying "if neither of those two
choices are what you like, you can partition manually here".

I do NOT think that DOS can achieve that and I do NOT think
that we should port GPARTED and all the tools which it calls
in the background to DOS. Whoever wants to resize partitions
for dual-booting DOS with Windows 10 can simply boot a Linux
tool Live CD once. No worries, they are easy to use. And even
then, DOS has no tools which would be able to automatically
create a foolproof dual boot menu.

Bernd et al HAVE tried that in older versions of the distro,
for Windows 95/98 on FAT partitions, but it was far from being
foolproof so I am quite okay with forcing the user to manually
mess with such things instead of having an install wizard which
tries to do it but then fails and fries your other partitions.

Of course this topic is open for discussion :-)

I had not been paying attention that Laaca advertised a system
information screen in his own BLOCEK app here, but given that he
has added that, he could also make a stand-alone sysinfo tool to
include in the distro, for those who do not know that they have
to look for that information inside a text editor.

Alternatively, which system information tools with suitable open
source license could be included? As RayeR already wrote on BTTR,
HWINFO (which? note the Linux open source one, I assume), NSSI
(Navrátil Software System Information, mirrored on BTTR actually:
http://www.bttr-software.de/freesoft/system.htm ), VC (NC style
file manager, last update 2001?) etc. are not open source. BTTR
also lists AIDA (benchmarks and sysinfo), PC Diagnostics, etc.

I remember that MS DOS came with MSD (and MEMMAKER, a wizard to
optimize your config/autoexec for TSR/driver order in UMB etc.)
but I also remember that MSD was not particularily useful when
you compared it to classics such as Quarterdeck Manifest MFT.

As you can guess, FreeDOS is missing cool apps here. How about

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/system/compinfo/

Would COMPINFO be sufficient?

How about file managers? NDN (Necromancer's DOS Navigator at
ndn.muxe.com) apparently has closed sources, but even supports
64-bit DPMI in DOS now? A free version of DOS NAVIGATOR, with
sources: https://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/dn/

The https://sourceforge.net/projects/doszip/ Doszip Commander is
yet another Norton Commander clone, as is the open source CONNECT
shell from http://www.dorlov.no-ip.com/Connect/ Some of the file
managers already are packaged for FreeDOS distros on ibiblio:

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/disk/dn151/

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/disk/dn2/

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/file/doszip/

Which of those are or should be included / installed by default?

Three alternatives to FDISK which are in our ibiblio collection are:

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/disk/xfdisk/

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/disk/ranish/
(Ranish Partition Manager, only version 2.37 comes with sources)

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/disk/spfdisk/

Which of those are how good or bad in your experience? I guess the
installer uses FDISK because that can be scripted to some degree?

So... Suggestions please :-) Which 1. SYSINFO TOOL, 2. FILE MANAGER
and 3. PARTITION EDITOR should be installed by default, used during
installation, be made available on the Live CD, etc.?

Cheers, Eric





PS: Interesting that util/user contains LPTLINK, which might be
a 2005 laplink clone? Is vc.zip really VISICALC? License??

PPS: Buy my pathetic little TUI menu tool! (it is free, of course) :-D
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/user/mausmenu.zip



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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[geneb]

On Thu, 29 Apr 2021, TK Chia wrote:


Hello Johnpaul Humphrey,


All the things he finds objectionable I would have called FEATURES. He
would do better on Ubuntu.


Me, I am not so sure.  That was from Laaca --- a developer of DOS
programs himself.  He also mentions that he had been "using DOS for 27
years".  So if he says that things are bad, maybe they _are_ bad (for
whatever reason), and we should take heed...



On the surface of it, he's apparently asking for a "windows experience" in 
a text mode operating system.  DOS isn't a "point and drool your way to 
fame and fortune" operating system.  If he thinks this is bad, he'd have 
a stroke when presented with a non-graphical UNIX system. ;)



g.

--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby.  Geeks collect hobbies.

ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Johnpaul Humphrey]

> The user even has no information which disc drives are in the system.
I believe I was able to get this information, but USB was not
recognized for obvious reasons.

> No file manager is prepared and the user has no usable help.
I did have to download a file manager to get one, but dir is a good start.
Help was less helpful than man on UNIX in my experience, why I can't tell.

> The install is slow
That is interesting. I guess I didn't know how fast installs could be.
The fastest install I have ever had is Haiku, which is like lightning,
but FreeDOS install seemed pretty fast. I have no experience with
other DOSs though.

I do not know about SYSINFO. I do not use it too much. having a way to
check battery would be good on laptop.

Do you want FreeDOS to be like Hiren's boot CD? I know LiveCD is often
used for Recovery, but that seems like a sad place to end up.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Johnpaul Humphrey]

I did not realize that! I just read complaints about no file managers
and ugly programs. That changes things.

On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 8:40 AM TK Chia  wrote:
>
> Hello Johnpaul Humphrey,
>
> > All the things he finds objectionable I would have called FEATURES. He
> > would do better on Ubuntu.
>
> Me, I am not so sure.  That was from Laaca --- a developer of DOS
> programs himself.  He also mentions that he had been "using DOS for 27
> years".  So if he says that things are bad, maybe they _are_ bad (for
> whatever reason), and we should take heed...
>
> Thank you!
>
> --
> https://gitlab.com/tkchia :: https://github.com/tkchia
>
>
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-- 
Johnpaul T. Humphrey


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[TK Chia]

Hello Johnpaul Humphrey,


All the things he finds objectionable I would have called FEATURES. He
would do better on Ubuntu.


Me, I am not so sure.  That was from Laaca --- a developer of DOS
programs himself.  He also mentions that he had been "using DOS for 27
years".  So if he says that things are bad, maybe they _are_ bad (for
whatever reason), and we should take heed...

Thank you!

--
https://gitlab.com/tkchia :: https://github.com/tkchia


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Johnpaul Humphrey]

All the things he finds objectionable I would have called FEATURES. He
would do better on Ubuntu.

On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 8:19 AM Eric Auer  wrote:
>
>
> Hi! Forwarding something from the BTTR forum:
>
> "I tried to use the FreeDOS 1.3RC installation CD. Because I found
> a Dell Latitude610 notebook. And I am really dispappointed because
> it is something really awful. The live system is unusable, the boot
> process ends in the minimal configuration unable to do anything
> useful. No file manager is prepared and the user has no usable help.
> The user even has no information which disc drives are in the system."
>
> The review also compares it to the Windows-based Hiren Boot CD,
> making me wonder whether we play in the same usability league.
>
> In Hiren, you get a hierarchical menu of available utilities at
> boot. So for Live CD utility purposes, it is very easy to use.
>
> Next, the review tests installation, given that the Live CD use
> case is as unfriendly as you would expect DOS to be ;-)
>
> "Ugly FDisk (although we have a more user friendly partition tools)"
>
> Also, the install is slow. How slow is it? Are caches used? ELTORITO?
>
> After the install: Again "No file manager, no infi about installed
> drives. No utility for getting some system information" Interestingly,
> the reporter mentions the BLOCEK text editor as the only source for
> getting a system information overview?
>
> Which better SYSINFO utilities could we bundle? HWINFO, NSSI
> and VC probably are all closed source, what else is out there?
>
> Finally, the reporter (the whole post has a quite harsh tone)
> complains that the default install will install FAR too few
> useful apps and that the package management groups are badly
> sorted (e.g. no subcategories for utilities) and that there
> should be no base64 tool in "base"...
>
> Regards, Eric
>
>
>
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-- 
Johnpaul T. Humphrey


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[TK Chia]

Hello Eric,


Finally, the reporter (the whole post has a quite harsh tone)
complains that the default install will install FAR too few
useful apps and that the package management groups are badly
sorted (e.g. no subcategories for utilities) and that there
should be no base64 tool in "base"...


Apparently the review was from Laaca --- the author of Blocek.

Thank you!

--
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[Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Eric Auer]

Hi! Forwarding something from the BTTR forum:

"I tried to use the FreeDOS 1.3RC installation CD. Because I found
a Dell Latitude610 notebook. And I am really dispappointed because
it is something really awful. The live system is unusable, the boot
process ends in the minimal configuration unable to do anything
useful. No file manager is prepared and the user has no usable help.
The user even has no information which disc drives are in the system."

The review also compares it to the Windows-based Hiren Boot CD,
making me wonder whether we play in the same usability league.

In Hiren, you get a hierarchical menu of available utilities at
boot. So for Live CD utility purposes, it is very easy to use.

Next, the review tests installation, given that the Live CD use
case is as unfriendly as you would expect DOS to be ;-)

"Ugly FDisk (although we have a more user friendly partition tools)"

Also, the install is slow. How slow is it? Are caches used? ELTORITO?

After the install: Again "No file manager, no infi about installed
drives. No utility for getting some system information" Interestingly,
the reporter mentions the BLOCEK text editor as the only source for
getting a system information overview?

Which better SYSINFO utilities could we bundle? HWINFO, NSSI
and VC probably are all closed source, what else is out there?

Finally, the reporter (the whole post has a quite harsh tone)
complains that the default install will install FAR too few
useful apps and that the package management groups are badly
sorted (e.g. no subcategories for utilities) and that there
should be no base64 tool in "base"...

Regards, Eric



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