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RxDOS vs DOS-C (Announce)

posted by Rugxulo Homepage, Usono, 29.10.2007, 13:53

> As you can see from this
> announcement,
> RxDOS was released under the GPL in 1999. I think that this was just at the
> time when it was discussed which kernel to choose for FreeDOS - DOS-C or
> RxDOS.
>
> DOS-C was chosen exactly because it's written in "C". The argument was
> that much more developers know "C" than Assembler.

DOS-C's first GPL release (according to Eric according to Pat) was 1 September 1995. So, that's well before RxDOS was made GPL (1999). Plus, I think Jim Hall was put in contact with Pat thanks to the DOSEMU people. So, whoever was working on DOSEMU probably was already using DOS-C, so it only makes sense to use the same kernel (I guess). Besides, 1995 was before FASM or NASM really got going. Then again, it was also before OpenWatcom was free, so I dunno really. And who knows how much false hope was wasted on the borked OpenDOS fiasco. (Seems a few FreeDOS people were interested in that, but bad licensing killed it.)

I'm all for assembly, but I personally find that FreeDOS is plenty good enough even though it's mostly C-based. I don't think it's necessarily easier to maintain because of that, though. (And I've never thought it was slow, but that's just my limited experience.)

 

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