Hi Michael, > Windows 98 is NOT Windows NT. It is a version of Windows that > runs on top of dos. Linux uses more memory because it is a > multi user system with an overkill gui.
According to various Wikipedia articles about this, the system requirements for minimum RAM and disk space are: >> Windows 98 16 MB 500 MB (but 24 MB recommended) >> Windows NT 12 MB 110 MB (data for Windows NT4) >> ReactOS 64 MB 150 MB (roughly Windows 2000) Wikipedia also says that starting with WfW 3.11, the disk / file access part of Windows is no longer done by DOS. As I would say that memory allocation for Windows is not done by DOS either, the purpose of DOS in Windows 98 can hardly be anything more than having a simple boot loader. You could boot Linux in DOS with Loadlin if you want that kind of a "DOS based" system ;-) > Freedos 32 should not > in theory doesn't need dos extenders as it already runs in > protected mode and it offers a flat memory model. Dos extenders are typically small compared to the operating system itself, but you are right that you may get limited speed improvements by avoiding the task changes between a "real" (actually vm86) mode kernel and protected mode apps. Note, however, that the typical bottleneck in DOS is not the CPU, RAM or task switching speed but rather disk speed and amount of useable RAM. The latter is already solved by using a DOS extender. Hard to say whether a flat memory model has any pros and cons compared to various DOS extender memory models, overhead should be minimal and mostly hidden in C. Also note that the IRQ handling overhead of a DOS extender is not much worse than the one caused by loading EMM386. > I am not proposing Windows NT Lite, I am proposing > a Windows compatible gui that runs on top of dos Then you should try Windows 3.1 or HXRT, not Windows 9x because Windows 9x does not run on top of DOS... :-). > minus some of the features that > would make it really really heavy. As said, Windows 98 / NT only use a fraction of the memory used by Firefox which you used as the example app. Actually www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/system-requirements says that you cannot run Firefox on Windows 98 / NT at all, you need at least Windows 2000 with 64 or better 128 MB of RAM... In Linux, you need GTK+ 2.10, GLib 2.12, Pango 1.14 and X.org 1.0 (or higher). As Dos does not provide any of this, you would have to port all of them to DOS to make Firefox work, so you do get a "heavy" system even in DOS. If you use the Windows 2000 version of Firefox instead, you will need something which can run Windows 2000 apps, which is exactly what ReactOS does for you, after getting rid of the DOS part which is not useful for Windows 2000 anyway. Note that Firefox 2 did actually run on Windows 98 / NT: www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/system-requirements-v2.html It needed 64 MB (better 128 MB) RAM, too. The Linux version needed glibc 2.3.2, gtk+ 2.0, XFree86 3.3.6, libstdc++ 5 and fontconfig/xft. The "glibc gtk+ fontconfig xfree" and "gtk glib pango x" combinations mean "big parts of a Linux with Gnome GUI and Unicode fonts but zero apps". Gnome would include a file manager and so on which Firefox does not need :-). After so much talk about Firefox, we should not forget that there are lighter browsers which do run in DOS, for example Arachne. Which other nice DOS browsers do you know? There are lynx and elinks but they are text mode, which graphical browsers remain? Eric :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
