On at 2022-03-14 18:47 +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
I don't agree that this feature "makes DOS apps part of the apps on
the computer"
DOS apps (not games but productivity applications) are by nature text
mode apps, with only a few modern exceptions which probably won't work
well on DOSemu anyway.
All xNix text-mode apps are designed and intended to exchange
information by means of plain text: either text files, or pipes.
DOS apps under DOSemu *windows* work on whatever is in the Linux
filesystem, and that generally includes the ability to import or
export plain-text files. And if you run them without graphics support,
you can pipe their output to other shell commands.
For me, that means that DOS apps can be used alongside with, and
interact with, Linux apps. That is what I was getting at when I said
that they work alongside Linux apps, as just another type of binary
you can run -- in a way that is _not_ true of DOS inside a VM.
Some things to note:
1. Yes, you can use your Linux terminal (dosemu mode -t or mode -dumb)
to do your DOS application's I/O. This is fairly unique, although qemu's
-curses mode is similar to dosemu's -t.
2. dosemu runs an actual DOS system, traditionally FreeDOS. On the
contrary, DOSBox is mostly used without a proper DOS, running its own
operating system shims. (dosemu2 is blurring the distinction a bit with
fdpp, which is a FreeDOS kernel port that runs in 32-bit or 64-bit host
code and replaces the proper DOS kernel you can use otherwise. fdpp
*only* runs in dosemu2 so far.)
3. The major feature of dosemu is certainly its filesystem redirector,
based on the MachFS DOS redirector, which allows you to access host
directories as DOS drives, and supports (to some extent) simultaneous
accesses from Linux and DOS. (DOSBox has this too, but IIRC only for its
built-in OS, not for when you boot an actual DOS instead.)
Other than that I don't really consider dosemu (or DOSBox) anything
other than a "Virtual Machine" with some DOS-specific knacks.
Regards,
ecm
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