DOS better than Windows? That's just crazy! In 1995 I bought a computer that came with Windows 95 (Windows based on DOS). To give you an idea of how much a POS DOS really is,
that computer had a sticker on it showing the com, PCI, ISA, and IRQ numbers of all the hardware. To setup the sound for games like Duke Nukem, I actually had to look at that sticker to assign the IRQ value of my sound card. That is absolutely pathetic. Even Linux, the "I'm not going to wipe your ass for you" OS, does not ask you to remember IRQ values.
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It would be awesome if modern games came out for DOS. All you have running on your computer is a very light OS, the game and only what's required to play the game (hardware drivers). 99,9% of CPU dedicated to the game itself.
OS was a major slowdown in the early 90's because everything was software rendered. If 20% of your CPU was being wasted on something other than the game, like Winamp, you frame rate would really drop 20%. Today, the major factor is video card. Today, if I have a program running that takes 20% of my CPU power, I don't actually see a 20% drop in frame rate. The drop in frame rate probably wouldn't even be noticable unless the game requires a lot of CPU power for something like bots.
The major thing about using a small OS would be the extra RAM available. Having to resort to using the swap file when gaming is what will kill the smoothness of the game you're playing. Try playing Doom 3 with only 256MB of RAM and you'll understand.
[ August 24, 2004: Message edited by: ShawnD1 ]