Slashdot Mirror
Interview: Learn About the FreeDOS Project
This week's interview guest is Jim Hall, founder of the FreeDOS project. Jim isn't rich or famous, just an old-fashioned open source contributor who helped start a humble but useful project back in 1994 and still works on it as much as he can. FreeDOS is the DOS behind DOSEmu, so if you've used any DOS programs (like games) under Linux, you've benefited from Jim's work. One question per post, please. Moderators do the question selection, with editorial help only if there are duplicate or overlapping questions. Cutoff for questions and moderation is Tuesday noon, U.S. EST. Jim's answers will appear Friday.
So where are we going - and how far will it take FreeDOS?
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
I found out about this a while ago, when I first heard about Litestep, but I've always wondered one thing...
Could you rewrite a version of DOS that'll work with Windows 9x and have the correct slashes ( / ) in the filesystem instead of those bass-ackward ones ( \ ) that are always in the wrong spot to type quickly?
- 8Complex
While it is very nice to have some sort of non-MS DOS available (at least for us gamers), it still basically 15-20 year old technology. How much longer do you think DOS, or DOS emulation, will be necessary?
The cake is a pie
I was once an enthuastic supporter of dos back when it was a viable os. When I saw the freedos project I was quite interested in getting it to work for me in some way. However what turned me off fight from the start was that development seemed a bit; how shall I put this: slow. I have since moved to linux and still run a partition that relies on MSDOS for some things.
Will development increase in capacity, and have you met your goals? I have also read your documentation and you implied that a 32 bit extension to the dos package was at some future time going to be implimented at some future date; you also said that if people didn't like what you had they could move to linux. My related question is when will you be able to impliment these features (32 bit) to your dos project.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Since you must be very well acquainted with the internals of DOS, are there any parts of it that have struck you either as being very clever in a hackerish sort of way, or very clumsy and kludgy (in an equally hackerish sort of way)?
Whilst we all loathed DOS when it was around, there was no debating that it was danged fast for some things, and its complete lack of abstraction was fun for games programmers and the like who got to cut through to the hardware when it suited them (and when it didn't!). Do you miss this rawness and freedom in more protective environments like Unix and Win32?
-----
Do you think this sort of project is only suitable for dead or dying software? By this I mean, DOS hasn't been in significant development for a while now, so making a clone is like reconstructing a static subject. Do you think your project could have been successful during the time of MS-DOS 6.0, or instead do you think commercial developers would have torpedoed your efforts by redesigning their next release to be less cloneable?
Certified Microsoft Notworking Specialist
Where do you see the future of OS/hardware emulation and binary compatibility going, with more new architectures coming out (Crusoe, Merced, etc.)? Do stand-alone legacy OS clones like Free-DOS have a place in this evolving landscape or will backwards compatibility eventually become entirely modularized within compatibility layers in next generation OSes?
I've played a bit with FreeDOS (Beta3) on a spare 386 some. I will likely be trying Beta4 (or later, depending on my time..) in the foreseeable future. I'm reasonably impressed with the "lite" setup version. (Though warning a third disk, blank, may be needed would be a Good Idea, IMO.)
What do you feel are the remaining steps that must be taken to move from beta to the first non-beta version? No, I am NOT asking time to that release, that is always 'longer than desired.' And thank you for your time.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
There are a lot of pseudo embedded DOS based systems out there. My previous employer had a remote access concentrator product in this category, and paid a non-trivial sum per box to Microsoft for DOS 5.0, a product that Microsoft refused to support. Unfortunately, I was unable to convince management to give Free DOS a try.
Has Free DOS made any progress in these types of markets? Are people using Free DOS to replace MS-DOS in these pseudo embedded systems?
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
I used to program dos back when it payed the bills and used undocumented dos a lot. What was harder? replicating the undocumented by MS but very well documented by third parties code or the bog standard should have been documented better calls? Sparkes
blog and junk
I have recently setup a client with a Linux server running DOSEMU and one of the requirements was to access network shares from within the DOSEMU session using LREDIR or emufs.sys.
:) )
We had to deploy the system with MS-DOS 6.22 (in other words we could not deply the system using Free DOS) because FAQ 6.1 of the DOSEMU FAQ says "First make sure you aren't using DosC (the FreeDos kernel), because unfortunately this can't yet cope with the redirector stuff. " (I know it doesn't work - I tried anyway
Anyway, my question is, when will FreeDOS work with redirection?
The DVD CCA's argument has essentially become, had MS thought in advance to include but a single sentence in a license agreement, FreeDOS could have been supressed.
How do you feel about this, and what advantages do you feel society has a whole has received from the fruits of your reverse engineered labors? Similarly, what harms would we have as a society if you could never have rewritten DOS?
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
A previous Slashdot article included reactions to the settling of Caldera's lawsuit regarding DR-DOS, their non-free DOS clone. What are your feelings on the lawsuit and its settlement? Even though your development isn't focused upon running Windows, have you ever run into any similar "forced incompatibility" issues (Microsoft-related or otherwise)?
What is FreeDOS' take on such quirks? In other words, where the system call specification is more general than what was actually implemented, are you referring back to the specification or what Microsoft actually coded?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
AFAIK there is no 'NETWORK REDIRECTOR' or equivalent for FreeDOS at all.
Please comment on what effort(s) you see as needed to NFS network a FreeDOS machine. (I'd be happy to give whatever help I can to get this done.)
BTW- I am doing this with M$DOS and XFS, but AFAIK there is NO WAY to network FreeDOS and get a 'drive letter' which connects to a networked machine or to send LPT1: stuff to a remote printer.
I recall early in the beta 1 days of freedos, reading about LBA support and possibly VFAT and Fat32 support. How has the freedos project considered these goals in recent times, and are these goals attainable?
Desperation is a stinky cologne
And, relatedly, do you see places where MS seemed to plan to make DOS better, but instead let it languish while they worked towards Windows?
I find DOS to be an extremely useful system, and a necessary one if you're running old hardware. I personally know know several students who contentedly write their essays on 286 machines using DOS WordPerfect or WordStar. I myself have an old PC XT, running DR DOS, networked to my Linux router using a DOS plip packet driver and wattcp. There's a lot of old hardware around, and I think that tcp/ip network connectivity is one of the most useful ways of breathing added vitality into old boxes. The problem with it now is that it can be a bear to setup (especially dialup ppp connections), and most of the people I know who would make use of it are not exactly computer enthusiasts.
Looking through the FreeDOS software lists I don't see any mention of packet drivers, tcp/ip stacks, or pppd implementations. Are there any plans of integrating some form of tcp/ip network connectivity in future versions of FreeDOS? If so, would it be easier to setup then what is presently available?
Keep up the good work, I've been watching FreeDOS for a while, and I'm looking forward to it's final release.
Matthew Adie
Hyperbolic Tangent