[PLUG] Freedos-user - What do you need from Windows world...

drew wymore drew.wymore at gmail.com
Sat Jun 20 01:23:18 UTC 2009


My understanding was that a couple of the games you mention would run
under wine but due to your choice of a RHEL clone the mesa drivers
weren't up to date because video on a server distro just isn't much of
a priority.

I suspect to get what you want, you're going to either pay people to
do it or do it yourself.

On 6/19/09, Michael Robinson <plug_1 at robinson-west.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 2009-06-20 at 00:22 +0200, Eric Auer wrote:
>> Hi Michael,
>>
>> > Concerning ReactOS, please, it is only a hobby project for a few
>> > developers who have no idea when it will come out of Alpha status.
>>
>> FreeDOS is also only a hobby project for a few developers,
>> in the way that nobody is paid for writing FreeDOS...
>
> So what, that doesn't mean that Freedos is a project that it's
> developers have no intention of advancing.  With ReactOS, I get
> the impression that there is low morale or something and huge
> problems.  That doesn't seem to be the case, at least not yet,
> with Freedos.
>
>> > I've tried all the remakes of the gaming engine for Linux, they were
>> > abandoned and don't work.(For Westwood Command and Conquer Red Alert I)
>>
>> You can run the Windows versions in Linux directly, using Wine.
>
> I tried that, I couldn't get it to work after I got it to install to a
> bottle.
>
>> Even a project to create a free set of replacement updates for say
>> Windows 3.x or Windows 9x would be appropriate.
>>
>> The people who write ReactOS had the idea that until they would
>> be done, Win9x would be too outdated, I think, and this is
>> probably why they made a replacement for NT/2000 instead...
>
> They haven't completed a replacement for NT/2000/XP/etcetera.
> First off, ReactOS has a moving target for what it is supposed
> to be like.  Second off, it is probably easier to release bug
> fixes for an old operating system than it is to clone a new
> one from a few limited specifications.  Calling ReactOS anything
> at this point and using it in an argument against working on a
> GUI for Freedos that could partially replace the old dos based
> versions of Windows is totally unfair.  You are lucky these days
> if ReactOS works at all on your hardware and even under vmware
> it is unstable.  At least opengem, which is a start frankly,
> works. It doesn't run Firefox, but it works.
>
>> The list idea is still a good idea even if people want to argue with
>> me that Blake Stone and W3D work in Freedos.
>>
>> What do you think about the USB keyb theory, could that be the problem?
>> Can you check whether PS/2 keyboards work better?
>
> I think my version of W3D, version 1.1, doesn't work with Freedos.
> I went and downloaded a new copy from dosgamesarchive and lo and
> behold it was version 1.4.  1.4 starts up and works just
> fine under Freedos, although the sound seems to lag as I play.
> Part of the problem may be my tar archive of 1.1 where arachne
> doesn't seem to handle downloading tar archives properly.
> Ultimately, I ended up using firefox under 98 to download a
> new copy and I unzipped it with 7zip.
>
> As far as Blake Stone, I haven't checked if that works since my
> 486 running Freedos died.
>
>> > It will create a picture of what dos based Windows software
>> > people want and maybe just maybe something can be cloned or
>> > ported
>>
>> Sounds interesting, but then, porting to GEM would be like
>> reinventing the wheel now that Wine already supports the
>> original Windows versions of many apps and now that those
>> of the apps which are open source also have Linux versions.
>
> Well, those who run Freedos often do not or cannot run Linux.
> It is as bad to tell people who want to run dos that they need
> to run Linux as it is to tell them that they need to run
> Windows.  WINE is not an option under dos.  I have crossover
> Linux and it is not a panacea for every Windows program that
> I don't want to boot Windows for.  Many programs install
> with crossover linux, but they run so poorly that they aren't
> usable.
>
>> Love to have a Freedos compatible gui that runs Firefox.
>> I would say Linux - it runs dosemu where freedos runs fast :-)
> Only if you are on a computer that is fast enough to run
> Freedos fast under emulation.  For simplicity sake, there
> are a lot of reasons to avoid emulation altogether.
> DOSEMU is not the easiest project to work with.  Straight
> dos is beautifully simple, if I want to run Linux I'll run
> Linux.
>
>> runs in Linux and that it runs in Windows, but if it would
>> run in Freedos on a machine that can't run modern Linux or
>> modern Windows, that might be useful to someone.
>
>> I tried several browsers for Linux and opened the FreeDOS
>> homepage with them... The memory usage was: 150 MB, 32 MB,
>> 12 MB, 120 MB, 8 MB, 100 MB and 8 MB respectively, but all
>> browsers with RAM usage below 20 MB were text based only.
>> Smallest RAM usage graphical browser was DILLO  at 32 MB.
>> Maybe you can have a look at that instead of Firefox :-).
>
> I know about Dillo.  It has some of the same problems
> that Arachne has.  No, I need to run firefox because
> there is a filtering plug-in for it where even the
> 2.x versions are usable.  My PIII running 98SE can run
> Firefox 2.x no problem, but 98SE is a proprietary
> unsupported bloated mess.  Now, my PIII is slow but it
> has more than 256 megs of ram so ram usage is not an
> issue so much as processor speed.
>
> I have a PIII that I don't particularly want to run a
> modern Linux on as it isn't even 1.2 GHZ, the minimum
> to run Dirk Dashing secret Agent under Linux.  Why
> Disk Dashing needs a processor that fast is another
> issue for another day.
>
> Well, there are plenty of PIII's out there that one
> doesn't want to run a modern Linux on which are more
> than capable of running Firefox 2.x under Windows 98SE.
> It seems it should be possible to build something that
> is lighter than 98SE that can support Firefox on top of
> Freedos.  That would save the trouble of messing with
> DOSEMU and the trouble of rebooting to get into 98SE.
>
> Could X Windows run on top of Freedos?
> Could Freedos be an X client?  This would relieve
> the Freedos box of having to be "powerful enough"
> to run firefox.  The X server would have to be
> powerful enough, but the Freedos client box would
> only have to be capable of drawing what the server
> serves up to it.
>
> A lite version of Linux that runs from the Freedos
> C:> prompt with X Windows and Firefox is another
> possible option.  I'm thinking something slightly
> better than TWM, tab window manager, might do the
> trick for a light window manager.
>
> There are versions of Linux that run on top of dos,
> but I don't know what the status of them is today.
>
> I think a list of what people lose if they can't run
> Windows on top of Freedos could be useful.  For some
> things on the list, there might be substitutes.  For
> other things, replacing Windows to some degree might
> make sense ( maybe with an X Windows client ).
>
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