> Until Microsoft isn't a monopoly, Stallman > almost has to be the way he is and can hardly change at all.
Microsoft isn't really the problem any longer. You can pretty much get Windows 10 for free. Fewer and fewer people have PCs in their homes, having been replaced by phones and tablets which don't run Windows. The corporate world has more Apple laptops than ever before. Everyone is offering cloud-based software, in some cases by subscription, so really any operating system with a web browser is all you need now. > Even today, where is NT lite from Microsoft? Do you mean Windows PE? AFAIK that's available for free, even though it's not open source. > Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64 bit is too expensive at ~$200 for a retail > copy. I don't appreciate Microsoft doing away with keys on top of > forcing activation and the OS potentially not working unless it can > hook to the Microsoft Cloud and verify that you are still allowed to > use it. This is terribly abusive along with requiring activation in > the first place. When ReactOS is stable, anybody who needs Windows NT > won't have to rent Windows from Microsoft anymore where that is > obviously Microsoft's opinion of what you will have to do in the near > future to have Windows NT on your computer period. Given that you hate Microsoft so much, what do you need Windows NT for so badly that you absolutely cannot under any circumstances do under another OS like Linux? I switched to Linux almost 20 years ago and aside from only one or two things (like submit my taxes, until recently), I have been able to do everything I need on it. And I didn't even dislike Microsoft that much to begin with! > All dos based Microsoft Windows versions and even Windows Millenium > are available online for free where museums are taking the huge risk > of being prosecuted by Microsoft for giving it away for free with all > the keys. Microsoft doesn't really care any more about the OS. Its market share is shrinking because the world is changing, which is why they practically give away Windows 10 for free now. It's no longer a requirement to run Windows, with the focus shifting to online subscription-based software, which solves all the traditional problems like piracy, high purchase cost being a barrier to entry, and having to sell a new version every few years to keep the money coming in. It's no wonder so many software companies are jumping on the idea. > An alternative to a > forking of FreeDOS that makes sense is to complement FreeDOS with a > high quality emulator that is targeted at a modern PC to make that PC > look like nothing newer than an Intel Pentium I 233 MMX on an early 32 > bit PCI motherboard that still had 2 EISA slots on it. This emulator > needs to be perfect and it needs to be maintained going forward. It > should be easier to fake old hardware on modern hardware than it was > to get to FreeDOS 1.0. You can literally strip down modern Linux to > create this emulator. Your emulator is the current Linux kernel > stripped down to create a fake Pentium I MMX on a modern PC that > doesn't have a BIOS at all. Have you heard of DOSBox? It's an emulator that runs on most operating systems, various CPU architectures, phones, tablets, etc. and it runs many DOS programs perfectly. Just running DOSBox would be immeasurably easier than somehow "stripping down" the Linux kernel to make it look a bit like DOS to applications. This sort of task would be gargantuan and few people would be interested in using the resulting abomination which would likely have compatibility problems galore, as DOS programs try to use hardware directly that the kernel is also trying to control. Not to mention that "needing to maintain" it is probably more than one person working full time can keep up with, at the rate the Linux kernel is updated. Are you volunteering to spend 40 hours a week or more keeping this up to date for the next few years? Also as a side note I don't think they produced any Pentium boards with EISA slots, they went straight to PCI and usually had a couple of 16-bit ISA slots for older cards. EISA stuff is incredibly rare. > The ReactOS project was going to provide a free Windows 95, but they > decided that that cannot be accomplished. Indeed, it's a task almost as difficult as stripping down the Linux kernel and turning it into a functional DOS emulator. > The threat of secure boot and EFI to Linux > and FreeDOS and any other open source operating system is real. If you > want most people to care about FreeDOS, fork it now. The threat *was* real many years ago when EFI and Secure Boot first came out. Since then every computer I've used has had both EFI and Secure Boot, and on every single one of them I had no problem just switching it off and booting Linux. Microsoft isn't really that interested any more in Secure Boot given the shrinking market share of PCs. If you want something to worry about, go look at Intel and all the backdoors - I mean management solutions - they put directly into their CPUs. You can put code in the motherboard firmware that will run on the CPU that not even the OS can detect, and it can even send and receive traffic over the onboard network card that is invisible to the OS running on the PC, so it can bypass any software firewall you install under Windows or Linux. Scary stuff. > SATA and USB support need to be removed completely from the current > FreeDOS IMO and you need to state clearly that you don't intend to > support these adequately in the current FreeDOS. > > The fork must run > syslinux on a modern motherboard that expects you to turn on secure > boot for Windows 10. First you say you want SATA and USB support removed, but then you are saying it must run on a modern motherboard? Which is it, you can't have both! > DOS in the modern era has never been on anything that doesn't have a > BIOS with the notable exception of the Raspberry Pi where I'm curious > how that even works. I think you'd be surprised how many motherboard firmware updates still require you to boot off a USB stick into - wait for it - FreeDOS, in order to reflash the EEPROM. As of today, I don't think I have yet owned a PC that has never booted some form of DOS to reflash its EFI/BIOS chip. Maybe soon it will become one of those things you need Windows for, but for the moment it's still something I have been able to do without Windows. I've never heard of DOS or FreeDOS running natively on the Pi, but the DOSBox emulator works perfectly on it and many people use it to play DOS games on the Pi. I believe you can even boot FreeDOS in DOSBox if you want a full OS rather than their cut-down command interpreter. Cheers, Adam. _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
