Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 11:38:14 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: steveo@aa.net (Steve Osterday) Cc: questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD 2.1 Announcement Message-ID: <199601081838.LAA10076@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199601072254.OAA17713@big.aa.net> from "Steve Osterday" at Jan 7, 96 02:58:34 pm
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> I'm curious..... Could I use FreeBSD as a replacement for DOS and > run everything I now run that is either DOS based or Windows based? > > I'm currently using Windows for work groups 3.11 with many apps, > sound card, scanner, tape drive, CD-RON drive, etc. Everything works > FINE, but I would like to have the functionality of multitasking > without the headaches of Win95. <:-) I have not upgraded and am not > too wild about the idea of ever upgrading if I can find a viable > alternative. I don't want to put myself in a closet either. MS has > some nice apps in spite of its lousey operating system. > > What would be the benefit of using FreeBSD vs OS/2 for instance? The main benefit of OS/2 is that it could run Windows programs, while FreeBSD (currently) can not. There is the WINE project, which has highly inflated interface coverage statistics (it quits counting after the first failure, so the percentage is always (n-1)/n * 100). There is also an announcement that Willows sources will become available soone (Jordan was kind enough to CC: me on a post to the multimedia list). This is an ABI environment (see the web page, but not the announcement, at www.willows.com). This is a full on Windows emulation environment. According to the web page, BSD support is not planned. They also (in their technical overview) claim usage of the TSS. Thius means BSDI in fact will probably not run multiple copies on the same platform without some more work (not that they plan a BSD port of any kind at present). Perhaps they are attempting to leverage the net for their developement? In any case, FreeBSD could not run this without TSS support for task switching on the order of the "RunDOS" environment in BSDI, and probably closer to the VM86() code necessary for all sorts of interesting DOS-like things (which no BSD can currently handle). So it would be a hard port in any case. BSD (and FreeBSD) support running DOS-only programs using PCEMU, which had the advantage of working on non-Intel processors, unlike the Linux DOSEMU. The disadvantage is that being somewhat apart from the hardware because of this means that using it as a basis for a WABI would be a hard thing. So if you have to run Windows programs, you should probably go with another OS. My personal recommendation (not my preference!) would be Windows NT. OS/2 is pretty much dead on the vine at IBM, and Windows95 is constantly being threatened with a short life cycle as MS attempts to convince people to move to NT. There is some speculation that Windows95 is just a mechanism for migrating vendors over to the Win32 API for the benefit of NT in any case. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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