On 4/18/2021 8:29 AM, Thomas Desi wrote:
• I never managed to install Freedos on a harddisk via the “live CD
1.3” or 1.2 version (image). All of them just stopped in telling me “packages
not found”. (For whatever reason. I gave up after some googleing and saw other
people had encountered similar problems and said it is the BIOS and this and
that... I stopped trying. It just takes too much time without a clear reason,
what to do, uncertain result. - (Note: I tried on a “MSI” laptop, a Samsung
“Netbook”, and an ITX Minicomputer) // I finally accomplished to install it on
the ITX via USB stick (with the freedos1.2.img) on it. However, “fdimples”
still is an enigma to me… it’s not available on that .img by calling it as a
command. But I don’t think I need it.
As I mentioned before, this might be an issue in initial installer,
which might be hard to test in all possible combinations/scenarios with
the rather small number of active people on the project. But there would
be ways around it...
• The USB “Problem”: has been discussed in the mailing list recently.
Honestly I don’t consider it an advantage to FreeDos having to boot a linux
system just to get to my DOS-.txt-files from the harddisk… (My ITX /
Bios/Freedos lets me transfer files to/fro USB Stick when booted from stick.
This is ok, so I can work with it, as startup time is very short. A couple of
seconds only. But booting from C: should recognize a USB-Stick present at
booting and be read/writeable.
Easier said than done. USB is a rather fickle beast which is much more
complicated as people (specially plain users) seem generally understand.
USB didn't really come out after DOS was declared as "End of Life" by
Microsoft and that was the starting point in time for FreeDOS. And for
an OS that is declared to be dying soon, you will find very little
support from mainstream manufacturers to write supporting drivers for
this. Specially as (Free)DOS doesn't really have a concept of "drivers",
that always has been something for applications to deal with...
• Printing is still waiting -- haven’t had time to fiddle with that. It
just didn’t work out of the box with my editors (LaserJet & Centronics cable).
I have no hopes to make it work, really… maybe “someday”...
What kind of "LaserJet"? If it is a real one (not one of those
"WinLasers" like HP-5L or HP-2020 or such), it should "just work". If it
is a "WinLaser", well, then you are SOL, as in that case, it is the OS
(Windows/macOS/Linux) that is doing all the heavy lifting of generating
the printing data and the printer itself is rather "stupid" and just
puts pixel on the paper as it is told by the OS. There simply is no way
to do that in DOS...
• Codepage (UTF-8 support? Maybe not possible without a converter
program? »Boček« Editor can save in UTF mode in DOS.)
Once again, UTF-8 is something that came out well after the age of DOS.
There will never be UTF-8 support in DOS itself (there were a lot of
hoops to jump through to get double-byte character sets like for
Japanese or Chinese supported in a meaningful way), so again, it is up
to an application to have knowledge about this...
• Whilst trying to make it work for my needs I get the feeling there is
much discussion about technical (historical?) details, which might be of
interest to some specialists. I get the idea that DOS (“Disk Operating System”)
is a sealed book for the initiated and not for ordinary people. This doesn’t
comfort me if I just want to save my files to a usb stick or print out on paper
a letter, feeling completely stupid after years and years of computer use on
all platforms. But, I am not a »coder« or tech.
No, not a "sealed book for the initiated", but a lot of people, like
you, who have been using newer OS in the last 20+ years just don't seem
to be able to easily put themselves back into a time and place where a
lot of technology that people take for granted today simply didn't exist
or was in its infancy.
6. Final thoughts
“We” (me, user-people) see a computer as an omnipresent “all-purpose” thing.
The industry makes us believe that is has to be fun, easy to use, performative,
stylish, multi-user, password-protected, videoconference-abled, netflixed,
youtubed, musiced, telephoneed, typewritered, medical diagnosis machineed,
internet deviced, and rocketed flying you to Mars … there is no end. Obviously
this leads to the gigantomastia 12GB of Windows ed.al. and the daily
update-itis. Size doesn’t matter much today, but it is overkill and a complete
mess to a single person, also regarding privacy… Let’s not go into this here.
As I stated above, a lot of people take a lot of those things for
granted these days, and then get all upset when being told "Sorry, that
doesn't (easily) work (this way) in DOS".
FreeDos, on the other hand, could be a surprisingly worthy alternative for
those who have only basic needs in computing - or very specialized ones (which
could be realized with the DOS means). Lean as in “vegetarian steak”,
comprehensible in it’s logic as a computer system, stable (I guess), and -
lean. (Again. This time: Fast)
Maybe I am too much of a purist, minimalist or so, - but I am VERY HAPPY if I
CANNOT and DON’T NEED to tweak anything when I don’t need to choose fonts,
sizes, colours etc. It is great with its minimal set of rules (=commands). It
has been thought through, I accept it and work with it. Just start being
productive.
No internet browsing, no checking emails, no whatsappdesktop, no whatever
networking, no virus, no commercials, no tracking, no listenings to music, no
ordering unnecessary stuff from amazon, no watching 3 videos at the same time.
(Anyway most people have Smartphones and Tablets to do all this!)
Well, at least to me, it seems you are contradicting your own statements
made above a bit. You can't have things in a "minimalist" way but expect
that you don't have to do a few things in a more manual way (like doing
a basic install). Or expecting variable length font support on an OS
that natively only works with variations of 8 bit code pages. Or having
seamless support for technologies that came out well after the golden
age of DOS...
Ralf
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