On Fri, 2011-08-26 at 11:11 +0000, andrea...@interfree.it wrote: > Hi at all > is there anyone who did develop the desktop2 program (by F. Ritter?) > I use it by many years in dos & freedos. I think it's a true dos/gui, > easy suitable in freedos -save little defect- with power to > associate program/file, cute/paste/copy, & make tmp batch programs > etc.. > I'd probe Gem, GVFM, seal and ozone but I think Desktop2 is still > the most stable dos/gui. > > regards > andrea
The most stable GUI depends on what you need. If you are wanting to run Windows applications, 16 bit ones that is, you are somewhat out of luck. I have installed Windows 3.1 on Freedos, but it is not free and there are certainly some issues. An option, if you want a really powerful GUI, is to use Syllable instead of Freedos. Syllable works on older computers that Linux does not work very well on. I've tried to stir some interest in putting out an advanced OpenGEM, but with no luck. I'd like to see OpenGEM outfitted with an optional word processor that rivals WordPerfect 6.0a supporting modern printers including photo printers. Once you get into photos and movies though, you might as well use: Linux, MacOS X, or even, yuck, Windows 7. The beauty of Freedos is that it supports a library of older software. The problem is, Freedos's underlying design is inadequate for modern software that is using multiple cores/processors and supporting multiple users simultaneously. Freedos, the underlying OS it is based on, predates hardware protection/abstraction being a practical idea. MS DOS was popular when the computer was used by one person at a time where access to data was equal for all users. Depending on what you need an OS to do determines what the GUI's underpinnings need to be capable of. All OS'es, even ones without character interfaces, determine what GUI's running on top of them can do practically speaking. If you feel you need Firefox or Chrome to browse the Web, then Freedos is not adequate. If you want to do basic word processing with nothing more advanced than what WordPerfect 6.0a can do, than Freedos is probably fine. The problem for Freedos, it is trying to be compatible with a closed source OS that was put together rapidly. Freedos does reasonably well, but there are definitely some corner cases that it cannot handle. Try playing Ultima 7 in Freedos. A 32/64 bit version of Freedos, something that goes beyond what Microsoft defined, has to be compatible with the current Freedos because of the project's current mandate. If an advanced Freedos supports every DOS program out there that ran in MS-DOS, that will be quite an accomplishment. Even if Freedos achieves complete compatibility with MS-DOS and is arguably better than MS-DOS, certain inherent limitations limit what Freedos can become. User separation and strong hardware abstraction are simply not possible. Another area of trouble for Freedos is this, is there enough freely available software for DOS environments? Is it even possible to buy commercial DOS software any more at reasonable prices? Are the best DOS programs ones that you will have to pirate? When MS-DOS support evaporated, companies didn't simply open up all their programs. Corel or whoever owned WordPerfect at the time didn't come out and say, you can distribute the DOS version as many times as you want now. The closest to free software you could get for the most part in the DOS world was shareware. Even today, even for Linux environments, there are software houses writing proprietary software that have no intention of ever releasing their software even in binary only form. Freedos at best will become more MS-DOS compatible and programs like Free Defrag will work better. I'd like to see projects started to fill in the gaps in available free software. If you have Linux, there is Libre Office. Trouble is, Linux doesn't run on a lot of older computers. I'm talking pre 386. Anymore, you need a Pentium or better (more like a multi core computer) to use a modern Linux distribution. As far as real time computing, something DOS is popular for, there is real time Linux. Linux can be pared down to fit in a tighter space and work within other constraints. Freedos's strongest reason to exist is that there is DOS software that people still want/need to use. Freedos is a niche operating system. An argument can be made that you shouldn't need a Linux/Windows/or Mac OSX system to do simple word processing and perform certain other offline tasks. Alternative OS'es to Freedos: menuetOS Syllable Visopsys ReactOS (WARNING: development is slow. Talking about that prohibited) Linux (various flavors) Windows 7 (yuck, Microsoft monopoly) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ EMC VNX: the world's simplest storage, starting under $10K The only unified storage solution that offers unified management Up to 160% more powerful than alternatives and 25% more efficient. Guaranteed. http://p.sf.net/sfu/emc-vnx-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
