Op 8-4-2012 8:17, Michael Robinson schreef: > Actually, I wish someone would release a Windows 3.1 driver that can > get my ATI Rage 128, XPERT 2000, card to output 256 colors. For that > matter, how hard would it be to make a Windows like graphical user > interface that can run Windows 3.1 software?
There should be some unofficial svga patch for windows 3.1 / 3.1.1 , but it had several limitations. > What might make sense is being able to dedicate one core in a multi core > 64 bit computer to running freedos via say a hypervisor. A hypervisor > is a simplified OS where it's sole purpose to exist is to create a > virtual hardware environment for other OS'es. Despite a lot of hardware being capable of it, it's still not simple to setup Citrix Xen or VMware ESXi. Linux-KVM (or QEMU-KVM, whatever) is also not simple, nor vga-passthrough. > Dosbox seems to run on any modern computer at this point. Syllable is > very interesting from the standpoint of being simple, but the project > needs more help. Any tiny operating system that QEMU can run on top of, would be interesting. I'd consider Dosbox a bit too limited. > I think the number one source of complexity today in operating systems > is that companies which produce computer hardware are Microsoft Windows > NT centric. In other words, they develop for a proprietary OS and keep > their mouths shut about how their product is actually laid out. Linux > gets a bad rap because many modern graphics cards don't work 100%, > especially AMD video cards. If there was enough competition like there > used to be and people were more aggressive about using open source OSes, > companies wouldn't be able to survive keeping their mouths shut and > focusing on NT only. AMD and NVIDIA do release Linux drivers, but they > are always deficient which I think is on purpose. Things are being kept vague on purpose it seems, nobody considers interesting aspects. For example, my current motherboard inits USB ports (1.1 and 2.0) at 1.1-speeds till an operating system driver is loaded. With recent hardware releases, I'm interested in a new board that can boot (DOS/Windows/Linux) from USB 3.0 (in BIOS-mode, not UEFI-only mode), at 3.0-speeds outside operating systems. I can check motherboard manuals all I want, but no info whatsoever. Same for FireWire booting (which nobody bothered with except Apple). As for graphics Linux drivers, there's manpower to be considered as well as how economical it is to set people to them, thus inherently flawed. At the opensource side there's patents and intellectual properties to consider before transferring features from binary drivers to opensource drivers. > If you want to be able to run Windows software, help the ReactOS people. > ReactOS has a long ways to go where I think significantly more help > would improve the outlook of people who have been working on the project > a long time and overall increase productivity. Testing ReactOS is > helping. Say you reverse engineer a piece of modern ATI/AMD hardware > that a lot of people have which doesn't even work well in Linux. As despicable as Windows 8 appears to be with its interface, I might still get it for the following features: * Native USB3.0 support (hence wanting usb3-booting system) * Windows-To-Go (Windows installed/usable on 32GB+ USB Flash Device) * Able to run Windows software properly. Linux has a bit more issues with that last point, the earlier 2 are already possible. Main desktop might stay Win7 or convert to Linux, who knows :) As for ReactOS I'd hope someone's willing to integrate a Ramdisk-driver with MEMDISK (or GRUB) detection so LiveCD and installCD can be booted from file instead of CDROM. It would create independence from UniATA and troublesome IDE/SATA/AHCI controllers as well. PartedMagic Linux-distro has done this already. FreeDOS also, in a few specific ways. > Something I've been mulling over is putting together a company that only > produces standards compliant computer hardware where the standards are > open ones that are readily available to everyone. It would be a big > jump though to go from a B.S. in computer science to a company producing > computer hardware that is both cutting edge and OSS compatible. What > would the business model for such a company be? You'd be nicely off acting as a Coreboot consultant, implementing it on actual hardware. Asrock E350 motherboard is supported, have fun creating a fully opensource machine. QEMU might be a good way to practice first though. Selling self-made ZFS-boxes (as NAS) might also be something nice, or passive Linux-based HTPCs. Consultancy and support seem to be a few ways to make a living from opensource software. Selling opensource systems might become hard, the Raspberry Pi is around as a nice cheap experiment for people. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second. Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You. Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
