There is an ODIN (one disk INstall) available on
the website, so yes. It's going to be minimalist, but the download to
install freedos does not fit on floppies yet. And I don't know if there
will be a floppy install set...
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2005 10:17
Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Re:
Question
I do not have a cd-rom, can the download fit on floppy Eric
Auer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi
Theresa,
> Is there a screen shot of FreeDos?
DOS itself
has very boring looks. But you can install e.g. OpenGEM, SEAL or Desktop2
on it, and then the it will look, of course, like OpenGEM, SEAL or
Desktop2. All those need DOS as the operating system under the hood, and
FreeDOS is a DOS.
I made a quick screenshot
anyway: http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~eric/freedos-boot.png
What you
see on this image is various messages from drivers, telling you that they
loaded okay at boot time, a prompt whether I want some "lredir" driver to
run, and finally the classic "C:\>" prompt which tells me that I can
now type commands. If it feels familiar, fine. If not, then you will
probably want to enter just a single command: Start the graphical user
interface of your choice and stay in there, so you do not have to see the
text screen...
The screen shot was taken inside DOSEMU, which is a
virtual PC (running in a window in Linux in this case) in which I have
installed FreeDOS. Without that, FreeDOS would just run full screen, not
in a window.
> I am new to programming but very interested in
giving it a shot...
You do not have to do "programming" to use DOS.
But unless you use a GUI, everything in DOS is controlled by the
keyboard, not the mouse.
> but a little timid about disabling my
laptop.
If you install FreeDOS from CD-ROM, it should automatically
create a boot menu which allows you to select between Win95 and FreeDOS
each time when you start the laptop (I assume that your Win95 is still
working okay, otherwise there would of course be no Win95 menu entry
needed).
> How do I find the necessary drivers?
You do not
need drivers for keyboard and display, and the default mouse driver of
FreeDOS works with many common mou se types. You do not need drivers for
harddisk or diskette either. For everything else, you would have to tell
us what hardware exactly you have, then we can tell you which drivers we
can recommend.
> > Some people just snag the files off another
old > > computer and copy them over, because it works. >
> However, it robs the shareholders of Microsoft > > Corporation
by depriving an ebay vendor of a $10 sale, > > and that's why it is
illegal.
> FreeDos is legal, isn't it?
FreeDOS is
completely free and legal, written by volunteers all over the world. Even
some of the GUIs are completely free and legal, while others are not
free. The above should tell you that many people do not give a damn about
copying MS Windows or MS Office from their neighbours, but it is
certainly illegal. There are various legal alternatives: Use
OpenOffice.org, which is free and legal, pay 100s of bucks for a leg al
copy of MS Office, or buy it bundled with a new PC, in which case it
costs only a fraction of the normal price. Exactly the same happens for
Windows: As an alternative, you can use Linux, BeOS Zeta, FreeBSD or any
other free operating system (including FreeDOS), but you can also buy it
for quite some money, or buy it bundled with a new PC or at least "piece
of hardware". The bundled price for WinXP Home is around 100 Euros as far
as I remember.
In either case, WinXP and MS Office are far too
"heavy" for your very old laptop. So you can only use it with Win95 or at
most Win98se. In Germany, it is legal to sell 2nd hand copies of any
Windows version, as long as you REALLY sell it (give everything to the
one who buys it, and delete everything on your own PC: You must MOVE it
to the new owner, not COPY it...), but in other countries, it can happen
that a Windows license is glued to a human being or PC forever, even if
the PC falls apart i nto a pile of rusty dust. Anyway. You can buy 2nd
hand copies of Win95 for 20something and of Win98se for 40something $$.
You wrote that your laptop already has Win95 installed anyway. If you
have a legal copy, e.g. have the license certificate around, then you can
probably ask MS to send you a new CD-ROM if you have lost the original
one. And, at least my personal feeling tells me this, nobody would
complain if you use the CD- ROM of Win95 of somebody else to install
drivers on the Win95 which you already legally own, even if you no longer
have the original CD-ROM.
I hope that answers some of your
questions.
Eric.
PS: Please do make sure that you configure
your EMail program to send mail only as plain text. At the moment, you
use HTML, which is pretty "unstylish" for mailing lists / not nice and
easy to
read.
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