Operating Systems > Not Quite Mainstream OSes
Microsoft Windows!
Calum:
m.o'brien, i know little to nothing about those memory managers, so please let me know what you know, since i imagine it will be useful. it would be good to get those other GUIs on the go and learn some sort of DOS configuration stuff just for the sake of it. i seem to remember i had a mouse driver that worked in DOS but if i started the GUI (can't remember which one!) the mouse no longer worked (not so useful).
as for Caldera ClosedDOS, i think i would rather go straight to MSDOS 6.22 if i really can't get FreeDOS to do it for me. then i'll get my FreeDOS live CD and copy huge chunks of the OS over because it really is better in many ways over MSDOS.
sux, seriously, i agree with you but if they had the registry divided into one file per app, and made all the stuff that would bear it read only, then we would see a lot less errors (because of the read only thing) and any errors that did occur (in the editable config files) would be isolated to one particular app. This is how it works in linux and other *ix systems already, and always has. it is stable, because it is sensible. also because the editable config files tend to be readable and editable by humans in linux, you can simply edit them yourself with very little knowledge (it's not esoteric like regedit) or just delete the offending file and the app will create a new default one. i did this recently with GAIM in fact.
edit: here's the readme for the version of FreeDOS i hope to use btw:
http://smokeping.planetmirror.com/pub/freedos/files/distributions/beta9rc2/readme.txt
a furhter edit:
ah yes, here's the GUI i was talking about before:
http://www.qubeos.com/screens/index.htm
[ September 03, 2003: Message edited by: Calum ]
hm_murdock:
it looks a whole heckuva lot like Be.
do you have any links to better screenies?
mobrien_12:
quote:Originally posted by Calum:
m.o'brien, i know little to nothing about those memory managers, so please let me know what you know, since i imagine it will be useful.
--- End quote ---
Ok... There are three memory manager
files:
himem.exe
emm386
FXDMS
Emm386 works together with himem.exe. FXDMS is not compatible with either one. FXDMS works with DOS32 programs like SEAL. Emm386 works with older programs like GEM (including FreeGEM).
avello500:
quote:Originally posted by Calum:
it can't be simply because the binaries for the whole of MSDOS 6.22 and windows for workgroups including the extra printer drivers fit onto eleven floppies. so most of it has to have been added later for windows 98, 2000, xp etc. i suspect that not much code has survived from windows' GUI days through to the 2000/XP releases to be honest since they would likely need to recompile even all the things they have left relatively the same, which would likely involve large rewrites for updated file formats and to implement new API to replace some of the deprecated API in mswindows 3.x. Sorry, i know that's boring, but i suspect it is true.
To be honest i think they are worried that if they release the code for windows 3.11, a team of hackers will get together and make some GPL version of windows which will threaten to take what part of the market has not already gone to the BSD/Linux mob.
can you imagine a GPL development model fueled mswindows, based on mswindows 3.11? before any of that registry stuff? all the mistakes in windows since about 1993 could be identified, avoided and generally better solutions could be made. bad code could be replaced and within a few years a monster open source windows could be competing with the 'real' thing. of course by this time the two windowss would not be all that intercompatible. there would be programs that ran on both of course, and all the open source programs (thunderbird, mozilla, openoffice.org) would have versions for both etc, but as you can see now, one would be free. and it would be more stable. and all the open source programs would run on it. and they would be free. and unlike linux it has two advantages:
1) it really is windows, so the sheep would not balk at using it
2) it really is windows, so an unspecified amount of windows software will actually run on it, as is. with no emulators.
that's why it will never happen.
--- End quote ---
i went to a happy place while reading this. to bad it will never happen.
Calum:
quote:Originally posted by M. O'Brien:
Ok... There are three memory manager
files:
himem.exe
emm386
FXDMS
Emm386 works together with himem.exe. FXDMS is not compatible with either one. FXDMS works with DOS32 programs like SEAL. Emm386 works with older programs like GEM (including FreeGEM).
--- End quote ---
and do these memory managers have to be obtained separately or are they customarily part of the OS?
what's usual procedure for using them if one wants to run programs that need one and programs that need the other?
also the fact of me using FreeDOS may add a new dimension since it is a newer DOS and is written from scratch, it may know how to use more memory than 640k (what idiot thought that would be sufficient) and may not need a memory manager, but will programs which expect a memory manager be able to run on it? will FreeDOS have some interface to those programs which make them all think they are using their favourite memory manager?
i don't know.
in fact i still know nothing about them!
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