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New links for DOS. (Announce)

posted by Rugxulo Homepage, Usono, 23.07.2020, 05:25

Hey, I'm no expert, by far, but ....

> Links for DOS 2.20 is very compressible.
>
> For example, if "links-2.20-lite.exe" is compressed with "UPX", its size is
> reduced to 1458904, and if it is compressed with "7-ZIP", it is reduced to
> 1244005.
"Lite" doesn't have HTTPS/SSL support nor graphics. So I personally would rather try PAQ8o8 or PAQ8f (-1 or -5) on the "full" Links2 .EXE first, just out of curiosity.

"upx --best --lzma --all-filters" is probably fairly close to optimal (as far as .EXE compressors are concerned).

7-Zip is different. It uses LZMA2, 16 MB dictionary, and -mx5 by default (so you can crank that to -mx9). It does have .EXE filters for even better compression, but your file must have the actual .EXE extension in its name (which isn't common on, say, Linux). LZMA2 also is better for multi-threading (multiple blocks) and maybe has .WAV filter (not sure, can't remember).

Different methods (LZMA, PPMD, etc.) have different benefits, and specific filters (EXE, BMP, WAV, TXT) can help a lot, too. The various PAQ8, LPAQ, ZPAQ compressors had various filters and could use lots of memory (at least a GB or two, even in DOS). But overall, 7-Zip is obviously one of the best overall archivers nowadays (in speed, portability, RAM efficiency, compression ratio).

> This allows you to install it on MS-DOS floppy image files, with packet
> drivers..., in disk-less client machines...
Ever seen my MetaDOS 1.44 MB floppy image (only half full by default)? Far from perfect, but it uses packet drivers (ne2000 or pcntpk under VBox or QEMU). It only comes with mTCP's FTP + DHCP by default, but you can then grab Links2 from iBiblio with that.

> See:
>
> Links
Links2 is quite brilliant work (the DJGPP port especially). :-D

> UPX
Also brilliant, but be careful that default is UPX-NRV while older UPX-UCL builds exist. Just saying, the latter is slightly worse for non-LZMA (esp. 16-bit DOS binaries) but nothing much.

> 7Zip
Which version?? 7za 9.20 ran under HX, but I don't recall trying newer ones. There are also various p7zip (DJGPP) builds over the years, but they are somewhat buggy, incomplete, and hard to use.

> 7Zip decoder for DOS [7zdec]
It's fairly small (60 kb?) and supports LZMA, LZMA2, PPMD.

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