Baslinux mailing list

[Day Brown <daybrown AT hypertech.net>]

Neo Sze Wee wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 12:38:05PM -0500, James Miller wrote:
> > On Thu, 26 Jun 2003, Day Brown wrote:
> >
> > > When you do run dosemu, will it let you have the 50x80 screen? I see
> > > that you havta be root to change the terminal font in Linux.
> > >
> > I think various settings like that are possible in the config file -
> > dosemu.conf, IIRC.  Since I've made those remarks about dosemu and gotten
> > some feedback, I've actually managed to try it out.  It's much simpler to
> > set up than I had thought.  However, it seems to be really still in a sort
> > of beta state (my version is 0.99 something, btw).  I had been meaning to
> > ask onlist if anyone had managed to do anything useful with it: I suppose
>
> I heard the latest version allow you to get online.

But why would you want too? none of the dos browsers can handle all the flash
JS schitt anymore. There are lots of win xp servers out there with MS-CHAP, 
and
there is *no* dos PPP driver that will get you online with them.

I am beginning to see a kind of hybrid desktop, with a small dos
partition/drive that it boots from to the file manager with scrollbar color
pull downs that tend to be *more* useful than the GUI variety because
programmers get distracted with eye candy issues rather than real
functionality. But then- to launch loadlin to a slimmed down Linux so that it
comes up quickly with xwindows and your browser. Surf for ever, but- the
sabotage software will never think to look for your dos drive, whose boot 
could
be off a FD with the write tab shut.  Let them try to figure out how to write
to a locked floppy. There are dos tools that will copy your CMOS, and warn you
of any trouble. Which is most likely a change caused by a weak battery rather
than software sniping.  Anyone wanna take bets?

Back up your personal data on the dos drive. Or even move it so that sabotage
software cannot *find* your address list or whatever. And whatever you do, 
keep
your postings quiet on the issue, let the windoz or linux fanatics rave about
how great their OS is, and how it deserves all the masses of the faithful. Let
them go on about how theirs is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and let
them be the hacker targets for toasting.

With DOS LTOOLS, you'll *never* be told you dont have 'permission', and if you
can get back to the dos prompt, it'll *never* tell you cant shutdown.  With
drive DTRs of 10-100megs/*second*, the wait for a dos boot is insignificant. I
spoze you could use Lilo, but then, I've seen lotsa posts about problems with
that, and seen some myself when I swap a drive, and forget to adjust Lilo
properly. Or failed trying, but moved on to other issues.

I spoze there's a lotta shadetree system integrators out there who have 
several
systems running several different OSes, and more drives on the shelf with even
more distros. Stick one in a case, and it will likely ask you during the boot
process about installing the drivers for what it found. Which might, or might
not, work. I've seen dos boot systems that nothing else would, and so, if dos
wont boot, I'll quit trying to fix a Linux 'driver' problem.

So, when one is confronted with a much flakey hardware as I see, being able to
boot from dos and then load Linux seems real useful. Kinda like having thr
Linux 'rescue disk' on a hard drive.
I spoze at some point all these inconveniences for the single user will be
hammered out as the distro programmers get hip to the consensus of the 
threads.