DOS ain't dead

4DOS 7.59 has been released.

Build 159 (Version 7.59) ? 27 October 2007:

* Wildcard matches include all LFNs containing bracket characters ([])
* Added @MD5 function for files using the RSA algorithm from RFC 1321
* Updated help file for the above change

> 4DOS 7.59 has been released.

Hey lucho,

Not to be a nitpicker, but you could always decrease the download time if you were willing to use xdelta for the binaries. Just a hint, feel free to ignore.

http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pc/dos/djgpp/current/v2apps/xdlt112b.zip
http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pc/dos/djgpp/current/v2apps/xdlt112s.zip

> Not to be a nitpicker, but you could always decrease the download time if you
> were willing to use xdelta for the binaries. Just a hint, feel free to ignore.
>
> http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pc/dos/djgpp/current/v2apps/xdlt112b.zip
> http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pc/dos/djgpp/current/v2apps/xdlt112s.zip

I've thought about using a binary patch utility, but I remember how frustrated I was when Microsoft released many patches to convert MASM 6.11a to 6.11d, then to 6.12, then to 6.13, then to 6.14. Besides, any download size under 1 MB these days can be considered minor enough to be worried about. Plus, the updates are not so frequent. Forcing people to use a specific binary patch utility instead of downloading a new version's ZIP directly wouldn't be very good in my opinion. They will lose much more time fiddling with patches than just unzipping the ZIP.

> I've thought about using a binary patch utility, but ... any
> download size under 1 MB these days can be considered minor enough. ...
> Plus, the updates are not so frequent.

Good points. I was just considering the option (since no one ever uses it apart from a very very few .ISO creators). However, I can't help but feel sometimes that we're forgetting that some people are still on dialup. 1 MB is indeed not the end of the world, but anything more substantial can indeed be unobtainable except for the "elite" on DSL. :-/

Quick poll: anybody here still use dialup or otherwise slow connection?

> However, I can't help but feel sometimes that we're forgetting that some people
> are still on dialup. 1 MB is indeed not the end of the world, but anything
> more substantial can indeed be unobtainable except for the "elite" on DSL. :-/

I agree, but the slowest connection nowadays, 56 kbit/s, allows one to download 1 MB in just a couple of minutes