Re: Using FreeDOS In 2022

Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote:

On 2024-04-22, Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:

I like the simplicity of DOS too, but when people talk about using
it instead of modern Linux or Windows it occours to me that after
loading USB, Ethernet, file system (long file name support), and
mouse drivers, Maybe even a full multi-tasking user environment as
you suggest, you're basically building a complex modern OS on top
of DOS one TSR program at a time. But without much documentation or
support. To that end you can run loadlin.exe and just boot Linux
from DOS (or start pre-NT Windows).
>
Perhaps the nice thing about FreeDOS could be that you can choose
exactly how much of that complexity you want more easily?

 
Much of this stuff is a matter of perspective.  For someone who has
never touched DOS, it will represent MORE complexity since it is an
additional learning curve on top of whatever they are used to.

Well it's less complex for the computer running it. Hence faster to
start, more memory free. But for the human trying to understand it
all, yes it did come with a book-sized manual, and a lot of
standard Linux functionality only becomes available once you load
3rd party TSR programs on top of that, which have their own
documentation to read.

What got me started on my present retro kick was trying to run a
Linux VM on hardware that wasn't really up to the task.  Then i
started DOSBox on the same hardware and it was quite zippy.  I had
GNU stuff from DJGPP and some games.
 
In my perspective, this is where i see DOS shine.  Within single-task
constraints, the OS can run equivalent programs using a fraction of
the resources.  A recent stock Linux kernel can't really do anything
useful in 32 mb of memory, but DOS can.

32MB is pretty generous and really if you build a current Linux
kernel with minimal options enabled and drivers built-in (still
doing far more than a bare DOS installation), you'll have over half
of that RAM free. The trouble is that all the user-space software
you run on top will usually chew through RAM even more agressively.
But Linux doesn't make you run all that software, to run a single
program you could start the kernel with "init=my_program" and it
will just run "my_program", nothing else, and if my_program doesn't
need more than ~16MB RAM then you're set. Like I said before you
can even use LOADLIN.EXE to start Linux from DOS, so you could even
select Linux programs to launch from inside DOS and start them like
that using LOADLIN. You'd have to reboot when you're done though.

I doubt you could build current Linux kernels to be useful on a
computer with 3MB of RAM, but if you go back to Linux software from
the very end of the MSDOS era then you get things like BasicLinux:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/

There you also have the advantage of the software running on top of
Linux being smaller and faster because it's all become so much
fatter since then. DOS software generally didn't get enough
attention in years after that in order to get fat.

But of course the real case for DOS is if you want a useful system
with 640KB of RAM, and there Linux won't help you. In fact if you
never need more than 640KB of RAM in your life then DOS is pretty
much made for you. :)

Useful for what?  Not for consuming mass media.  For making old
hardware run, for tinkering around, and having fun.  For example:
https://krg.club/gb3kd/

That looks like something where a single-task OS might be an
advantage for real-time operation. Another example of how the
technical complexity of Linux can be a disadvantage.

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