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[keesan AT iamjlamb.com]

I tried replacing the himem.sys from DOS 6.22 with both
that from DOS 5.0 and that from DOS 7 (Win98) and in both
cases got the same screenful of error messages when I 
used DOS 6.22 to boot and then booted BL3 and tried to run
Xvesa with startx:
_X11TranSocketNEConnect:.......

Not a black screen, no need to reboot.

I remarked out the line with emm386.exe and tried again
with himem.sys from DOS 5 and DOS 7

DOS 5 - Interrupt pointer doesn't point at ROM
DOS 7 - Interrupt pointer doesn't point at ROM 
>>> black screen, had to reboot.

Remarked out the himem.sys line and Xvesa works.  
Therefore you cannot simply replace himem.sys in DOS 6.22 with
that from DOS 6 or 7 (Win98), you have to use the latter to
actually boot.

Two computers set up with Win98 DOS run Xvesa fine, as does
a DR-DOS computer (with emm386 that does the work of both
memory managers).  

I booted this MSDOS 6.22 with a Win98 floppy boot disk and
Xvesa works fine.  So it is not the Cyrix cpu (though that
might be what is causing Xvesa to take 30 sec to load the
first time, with some narrow green vertical stripes at
the page top for a while.  Same S3 Trio64 video as elsewhere).  

Apparently there is no way to boot with MS DOS 6.22 and himem.sys
and be able to use Xvesa.

One solution is to use Win98 DOS 7 on the computer, but then
you need to defragment DOS from Windows (or use FAT16 and stick 
in a DOS 6 boot disk every time you want to defragment).  Windows 
98 wastes 200M disk space and defragments very very slowly.
Win95 would take up less disk space - have not tested that DOS.

Another solution is to use DR-DOS on linux computers where
you also want to run DOS programs in high memory, but don't 
partition with DR-DOS fdisk, which numbers partitions oddly.
We use PQMagic and get the proper numbering.  Is it also 
possible to partition with MS DOS and then change the system
to DR-DOS?  There was also some problem about DR-DOS not
recognizing partitions made with Windows or vice versa ???
There may be a new DR-DOS out that fixed this.

A third solution is to reboot with F5 whenever you plan to
use linux with Xvesa - no himem.sys is loaded.  Or use a
boot menu if you expect to often use linux without first
using DOS.  Simple but a bit slower.

A fourth solution is to stay in console mode and use SVGAlib
with links2, and zgv as a viewer with text browsers.  To run
up to 10 programs in one console, use 'screen', which can
split the screen between two program windows.   To see more
in each of the two halves of the split screen, use vga=ask
or resizecons to get more columns and rows.  If you want to
use other fonts, load them with setfont (text mode) or use
links2  in SVGAlib mode (it has built-in Cyrillic fonts - 
I was surprised to see google return some search
results in Russian).  There is a built-in scroll buffer in
text mode (Shift-Page Up) - no need to run console programs
in xterm for that.  You can copy and paste with screen and
keyboard commands (no mouse needed) between programs.

So far I have not needed to use X except for Opera and viewing
pdf files.  GS text-mode does not display them legibly and
ghostview also requires X. (But DOS gs/psview can be used to
display with zooming).   XV is a nice image manipulation
program, that prints images.  What do other people use X for?