DOS ain't dead

Why MS-DOS still "wins" (Miscellaneous)

posted by Japheth , Germany (South), 09.04.2009, 07:20

> And let's be honest, without an active developer or sources, it's dead.

and

> It's amazing how little FreeDOS is used by you guys. Oh well, whatever. To each his own.

This isn't "amazing", it's reasonable and a matter of course. Let's see the FD pros and cons:

[talkative]

+ FD is "free" and "open source".

Fine - but virtually a non-issue for 99.97% of the FD users ( as you can see, I'm optimistically assuming that there are 10.000 FD users and 3 of those are able to understand the sources). Additionally, FD costs nothing, but since there are at least 1 billion of WinXP or Win9x licenses around which include MS-DOS 8 or 7.1, it isn't that big an advantage for private users.

+ FD is "alive"

There is reportedly a maintainer remaining for the FD kernel, but I'm unable to see "progress" - on the contrary, the recent versions of the FD kernel are now incompatible with HX, and I don't believe this will change anytime soon.

- FD is slow(er)

This was the result of a test a couple of years ago and since nothing has changed on the FD side I assume it is still valid. The differences were "significant".

- FD isn't fully compatible

some things are implemented differently (syntax of config.sys), some things are missing altogether. Anyways, some apps won't run, or at least won't run properly. Regrettably at least one of those apps (OW's WD) is frequently used by me.

[/talkative]

---
MS-DOS forever!

Complete thread:

• 4DOS - Ninho, 29.03.2009, 17:02 (Miscellaneous)
  • 4DOS - RayeR, 29.03.2009, 22:00
    • 4DOS - Ninho, 30.03.2009, 18:35
  • 4DOS - DOS386, 31.03.2009, 03:39
    • 4DOS - Ninho, 05.04.2009, 19:56
      • 4DOS - Rugxulo, 05.04.2009, 23:50
        • 4DOS - Japheth, 06.04.2009, 09:11
          • FreeDOS' main contributor - Rugxulo, 07.04.2009, 00:22
            • FreeDOS' main noise contributor - Japheth, 07.04.2009, 07:45
              • FreeDOS' contributor - Rugxulo, 07.04.2009, 13:24
                • FreeDOS' contributor - Khusraw, 07.04.2009, 15:13
                  • FreeDOS' contributor - ecm, 07.04.2009, 20:12
                    • FreeDOS' contributor - Khusraw, 07.04.2009, 20:35
                      • FreeDOS' contributor - ecm, 07.04.2009, 21:51
                  • FreeDOS' contributor - Rugxulo, 08.04.2009, 19:32
                    • Why MS-DOS still "wins" - Japheth, 09.04.2009, 07:20
                      • Why MS-DOS still "wins" - ecm, 09.04.2009, 12:27
                      • MS-DOS still wins (except when it doesn't) - Rugxulo, 09.04.2009, 14:39
                        • MS-DOS wins and wins - Japheth, 10.04.2009, 18:56
                          • MS-DOG wins and wins | Execellent BUG report - DOS386, 17.05.2009, 05:44
                            • .EXEcellent - ecm, 17.05.2009, 17:04
                    • FreeDOS' contributor - Khusraw, 09.04.2009, 08:12
                      • FreeDOS' contributor - Rugxulo, 09.04.2009, 14:23
                        • FreeDOS' contributor - Khusraw, 09.04.2009, 16:24
                          • FreeDOS' contributor - Rugxulo, 09.04.2009, 17:02
                            • FreeDOS' contributor - ecm, 10.04.2009, 03:39
                              • FreeDOS' contributor - Rugxulo, 10.04.2009, 05:09
                                • FreeDOS' contributor - ecm, 11.04.2009, 11:34
                • FreeDOS' contributor - Japheth, 07.04.2009, 15:24
                • FreeDOS' contributor - RayeR, 08.04.2009, 00:19
                  • FreeDOS' contributor - rr, 08.04.2009, 21:25
            • FreeDOS' main contributor - Khusraw, 07.04.2009, 10:27