Stop Microsoft
Operating Systems => Not Quite Mainstream OSes => Topic started by: Calum on 1 September 2003, 19:19
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yes, you read correctly, i said microsoft windows, and this is the alternate OSs section!
this is just a little note to mention that i am going to try and install a custom version of mswindows, using this page as a jump off point:
http://www.gaby.de/win3x/esoft.htm (http://www.gaby.de/win3x/esoft.htm)
Basically, i want to have FreeDOS as the (open source) operating system, run windows (3.11 for workgroups) over the top, with some GNU apps for DOS, and have Calmira (open source) provide the actual GUI!
I will be interested in what sort of non-MS networking and so on i an come up with too. i already have a netscape and mosaic to run on there, plus an old winamp 1.x and so forth.
just letting you know. it amuses me to think of mswindows sandwiched between two bits of open source software. the trouble will be getting it all to work together using only configuration (i cannot code, as i am duff).
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No offense but you are one sick man Calum. (http://smile.gif)
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quote:
Originally posted by Calum:
yes, you read correctly, i said microsoft windows, and this is the alternate OSs section!
this is just a little note to mention that i am going to try and install a custom version of mswindows, using this page as a jump off point:
http://www.gaby.de/win3x/esoft.htm (http://www.gaby.de/win3x/esoft.htm)
Basically, i want to have FreeDOS as the (open source) operating system, run windows (3.11 for workgroups) over the top, with some GNU apps for DOS, and have Calmira (open source) provide the actual GUI!
I will be interested in what sort of non-MS networking and so on i an come up with too. i already have a netscape and mosaic to run on there, plus an old winamp 1.x and so forth.
just letting you know. it amuses me to think of mswindows sandwiched between two bits of open source software. the trouble will be getting it all to work together using only configuration (i cannot code, as i am duff).
DR. Calum Frankenstien
It all sounds very intersting to me, but please don't post any screens. I want to wait until the final version is out before I see LongHorn :D
HAHA
I kinda wonder why MS dosen't release the source code for windows 3x, they aren't going to make any more money from it.
Did, or does OS/2 run on a DOS back end
Calum, I have to ask what was your inspiration?
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OS/2 is the back-end. it's not graphical in of itself. like Windows 9x, OS/2 runs a GUI shell over a text-based OS. However, unlike 9x, the OS below is 32-bit protected mode and is stable, fast, and supports all the cool shit
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also OS/2 supports MSDOS and windows 3.11 binaries also, but there are four reasons OS/2 never caught on:
1) direct competition with microsoft windows
2) everybody says OS/2 is really a bitch to administrate
3) OS/2 is stupidly expensive
4) slow moving sales, crap marketing, no compelling app, no reason to buy or switch to it.
back to "the project", no inspiration, i just read a lot of these people going on about how they want to remove pbrush, windows mediocre player and internet exploder from their computers, or use a shell other than explorer, but for some reason they want to keep windows. well i have dabbled in all that in the past, with limited success, and linux really answers all those issues better than any windows customisation could, but the fact is there are a lot of things come out since 1995, to enhance win3.11 and i thought well, older ms stuff will probably be less noncustomisable, plus why not try to kludge together as much of this as possible to come up with a working OS, with as much of it open source as possible...
i'm not saying it'll even work in the slightest, i suspect i will be waiting on FreeDOS to make a windows compatible version to be honest, and i could never get Desqview (the closed source port of X for MSDOS) to work*, but this might be something to do with it's activation code, and the fact that you can now legally use it, but you have to get an illegal seeming activation code, plus you have to download and create all the disks yourself. i may have done it all wrong, since there's little help and no support out there for it.
Anyway, i'm just interested in it. i'll have to look and see if there's a way i can install bash on a DOS system too, because the DOS CLI really sucks, although the FreeDOS crowd have *really* done a good job of adding the best bits of bash to their CLI.
* this was another ill fated competitor to MSwindows that was out about the same time as OS/2. the company that sold desqview wasn't as big as IBM, so they went bust.
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quote:
I kinda wonder why MS dosen't release the source code for windows 3x, they aren't going to make any more money from it.
There are some evil deeds even Microsoft wont do? No that can't be right there's no depth they wont stoop to...
Aha! I know what it is! They've trained a team of ninja hypnotists to sneak into the homes of all the Free Software and Open Source developers and read out bits of the Windows 3.1 source code. Then they go and put bits of Windows 3.1 in the source for their apps and so everything starts crashing. When Gates see's all the GNU/Linux / BSD OS's crashing he knows that it's time to strike and reveals the Windows 3.1 code in the Linux kernel reviving his slain mutant henchman Darl McBride to start a massive legal war bigger than the original SCO affair!
And he'll get away with it too if it isn't for a team of "anti-ninja-hypnotist-rocket-launcher" equipped gnus, penguins and devils!
We must find all the gnus, penguins and devils we can and train them into an army of warriors! Muah ha ha ha!
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What kind of person wants Windows3.1 ?!?!?!
That windows is shit, yes in that one they dont spy on you because I dont think Internet was alaviable at that time. It comes with all shit shit like paint, calulater, SHIT SUX, and this screen willl explain what happens on everywindows and will never be fixed
http://www.gaby.de/win3x/screens/nov01.gif (http://www.gaby.de/win3x/screens/nov01.gif)
Ideots that work for microsoft should realy work on the windows registry to make it more stable because it was always the same
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quote:
Originally posted by suselinux:
I kinda wonder why MS dosen't release the source code for windows 3x, they aren't going to make any more money from it.
Thats not the Microsoft Way. Caldera used to do this when they were Caldera and not SCO.
Also, MS claimed they lost the source code. Caldera sued MS over the built in incompatibilities of windows with DRDOS. When the courts ordered MS to produce the source code.. your honor we can't find it anymore.
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Calum, last I knew FreeDOS couldn't run Windows 3.1x. Has this changed??
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quote:
Originally posted by Windows_SuX_@$$:
What kind of person wants Windows3.1 ?!?!?!
That windows is shit, yes in that one they dont spy on you because I dont think Internet was alaviable at that time.
AH AH! strike one!
the Internet has been around since the seventies, and its predecessors have been kicking about since the late sixties. Bill Gates did not however admit that the Internet was worth anything until 1995 when he realised that he had better make it worth something because mosaic was going to get the de facto standard for the world wide web if he didn't buy it out. earlier versions of windows 95 did not come with IE or so i have heard, it was available as an add on, kind of like a service pack (after gates bought the mosaic browser and renamed it to internet exploiter).
And while i agree that that windows is shit, i put it to you that it is the best mswindows ever released for many reasons, depending on your outlook. I reckon it crashes less, does its job properly, admits it's not an OS, merely a GUI. given networking sucks the ass off a thousand donkeys, but hey, that's microsoft. plus you can get it for ten quid off of ebay totally legally and with NO requirement to put in some activation code.
quote:
It comes with all shit shit like paint, calulater, SHIT SUX,
well, in windows 3.11 you can (if you want to remove mspaint) simply type "del c:\windows\pbrush.exe" and that's it done! there's no registry (a HUGE problem with later windowss in my opinion) and few dlls. a lot more of the OS is scripts (which are human readable and human editable) instead of meaningless jibberish designed to obfuscate all configuration to mere mortals.
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and this screen willl explain what happens on everywindows and will never be fixed
http://www.gaby.de/win3x/screens/nov01.gif (http://www.gaby.de/win3x/screens/nov01.gif)
um, i actually suspect (although i am not in any way betting on it) that that shot has been doctored. it says in the URL that it's windows 3x but look, it has a windows start menu and toolbar which was not included in windows until windows 95 (and was seen in RiscOS seven years earlier) and although there are a couple of programs to emulate this bar in win3.x, they don't look like that.
In my opinion that's windows NT 3.x attempting to run a 32 bit windows 95 program, is it not? in which case my windows for workgroups 3.11 will not be affected. thank your lucky stars it's not a blue screen of death.
I quote:
deots that work for microsoft should realy work on the windows registry to make it more stable because it was always the same
i'm sorry but you cannot get away with using the words "windows registry" and "stable" inconjunction with each other. that is ridiculous. trying to fix the windows registry is like pissing into a hurricane*. each program should have its own configuration files and those should be kept in /etc and any files that need to be written to should be kept within a hidden directory within the user's home directory. eg program: amsn keeps config info within ~/.amsn et cetera. this works fine in linux, bsd, et cetera, and i have seen it at work in windows using open source programs such as gaim, mozilla firebird and filezilla. this is sensible because if one file gets corrupted then the rest are unnafected. and since /etc is read only to normal users, the chance of corruption is incredibly minimal. by contrast the registry is contained within only five files, all of which are open for read/write access by all users at all times! now that's fucking stupid!
finally the idea here is not to have windows 3.11 as such, it's to have FreeDOS running mswindows 3.11 as the network and bitmapping software with calmira as the GUI. basically i see the rols of mswindows as being similar to XFree86 in a normal linux distribution.
*pointless and stupid, in case you didn't get it
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quote:
Originally posted by M. O'Brien:
Calum, last I knew FreeDOS couldn't run Windows 3.1x. Has this changed??
nope, as far as i know it still can't run windows 3.1x, but FreeDOS 0.9b now has a native CDROM driver, which is a big step forward in my opinion, plus back at 0.8b there were rumours that some people had indeed managed to get windows to run on there, although i don't know how.
I do have some exe file which claims to alter MSDOS7 and above so that windows 3.11 can run on it, eg: you get windows 95 or 98, remove the GUI bits and install windows 3.11 on it, but you get an incompatibility error, which this file claims to fix. so i am hoping that it can fix this issue with FreeDOS also, since this is the same error i see whn i try to install mswindows over FreeDOS (or did in 0.8b anyway)
oddly enough i couldn't get ANY GUI to work under FreeDOS, and i tried 3 or 4. no that's a lie, i did get one to load up but couldn't get the mouse to go. can't remember which one it was though.
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quote:
Originally posted by suselinux:
I kinda wonder why MS dosen't release the source code for windows 3x, they aren't going to make any more money from it.
Because most of it is the same as Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, NT, and so on...
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it can't be simply because the binaries for the whole of MSDOS 6.22 and windows for workgroups including the extra printer drivers fit onto eleven floppies. so most of it has to have been added later for windows 98, 2000, xp etc. i suspect that not much code has survived from windows' GUI days through to the 2000/XP releases to be honest since they would likely need to recompile even all the things they have left relatively the same, which would likely involve large rewrites for updated file formats and to implement new API to replace some of the deprecated API in mswindows 3.x. Sorry, i know that's boring, but i suspect it is true.
To be honest i think they are worried that if they release the code for windows 3.11, a team of hackers will get together and make some GPL version of windows which will threaten to take what part of the market has not already gone to the BSD/Linux mob.
can you imagine a GPL development model fueled mswindows, based on mswindows 3.11? before any of that registry stuff? all the mistakes in windows since about 1993 could be identified, avoided and generally better solutions could be made. bad code could be replaced and within a few years a monster open source windows could be competing with the 'real' thing. of course by this time the two windowss would not be all that intercompatible. there would be programs that ran on both of course, and all the open source programs (thunderbird, mozilla, openoffice.org) would have versions for both etc, but as you can see now, one would be free. and it would be more stable. and all the open source programs would run on it. and they would be free. and unlike linux it has two advantages:
1) it really is windows, so the sheep would not balk at using it
2) it really is windows, so an unspecified amount of windows software will actually run on it, as is. with no emulators.
that's why it will never happen.
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quote:
Originally posted by Calum:
oddly enough i couldn't get ANY GUI to work under FreeDOS, and i tried 3 or 4. no that's a lie, i did get one to load up but couldn't get the mouse to go. can't remember which one it was though.
You can run win 3.11 it on DRDOS/OpenDOS, but its not perfect... and despite the free for personal use clause you might feel dirty using a product from the company that once was Caldera.
Anyway, you have to be really careful with the extended memory managers in Freedos when you try GUI's. There are 2 or 3 memory managers and they are mutually exclusive and from what I remember there were like only 1 or 2 that would work with Seal or GEM
You probably got GEM to work but needed to set the mouse driver to busmouse (that is the setting to use the DOS mouse drivers).
[ September 02, 2003: Message edited by: M. O'Brien ]
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Calum I mean they should Make it more stable, Wen I was messing around with alot of backdoors many of them [including the famous sub7{virus not Trojan prog}]edit your registry so when you start your windows box the virus runs so they can get in at any given time [ unless u got a firewall ] and after I deleted the viruses from my unorganized windows folder I noticed I had to edit my registry because when I restarted [ what u have to do to windows because its crap ] several messages apeard that this file can not be found so I had to edit my registry, windows should log one warning in a special registry edit folder and delete that from registry because many people dont know how to change the windows registry and it can be quite confusiong, the ideots at microsoft should organize it more 2, they say windows is the best and it won all these awards when its 200$ on plain shit also securitty sux, you can litteraly send someone a batch file to delete shit like rundll easily and fuck up their PC I dont know if you can do this on Linux I havent installed Mandrake yetm [im a noob to linux]
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m.o'brien, i know little to nothing about those memory managers, so please let me know what you know, since i imagine it will be useful. it would be good to get those other GUIs on the go and learn some sort of DOS configuration stuff just for the sake of it. i seem to remember i had a mouse driver that worked in DOS but if i started the GUI (can't remember which one!) the mouse no longer worked (not so useful).
as for Caldera ClosedDOS, i think i would rather go straight to MSDOS 6.22 if i really can't get FreeDOS to do it for me. then i'll get my FreeDOS live CD and copy huge chunks of the OS over because it really is better in many ways over MSDOS.
sux, seriously, i agree with you but if they had the registry divided into one file per app, and made all the stuff that would bear it read only, then we would see a lot less errors (because of the read only thing) and any errors that did occur (in the editable config files) would be isolated to one particular app. This is how it works in linux and other *ix systems already, and always has. it is stable, because it is sensible. also because the editable config files tend to be readable and editable by humans in linux, you can simply edit them yourself with very little knowledge (it's not esoteric like regedit) or just delete the offending file and the app will create a new default one. i did this recently with GAIM in fact.
edit: here's the readme for the version of FreeDOS i hope to use btw:
http://smokeping.planetmirror.com/pub/freedos/files/distributions/beta9rc2/readme.txt (http://smokeping.planetmirror.com/pub/freedos/files/distributions/beta9rc2/readme.txt)
a furhter edit:
ah yes, here's the GUI i was talking about before:
http://www.qubeos.com/screens/index.htm (http://www.qubeos.com/screens/index.htm)
[ September 03, 2003: Message edited by: Calum ]
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it looks a whole heckuva lot like Be.
do you have any links to better screenies?
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quote:
Originally posted by Calum:
m.o'brien, i know little to nothing about those memory managers, so please let me know what you know, since i imagine it will be useful.
Ok... There are three memory manager
files:
himem.exe
emm386
FXDMS
Emm386 works together with himem.exe. FXDMS is not compatible with either one. FXDMS works with DOS32 programs like SEAL. Emm386 works with older programs like GEM (including FreeGEM).
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quote:
Originally posted by Calum:
it can't be simply because the binaries for the whole of MSDOS 6.22 and windows for workgroups including the extra printer drivers fit onto eleven floppies. so most of it has to have been added later for windows 98, 2000, xp etc. i suspect that not much code has survived from windows' GUI days through to the 2000/XP releases to be honest since they would likely need to recompile even all the things they have left relatively the same, which would likely involve large rewrites for updated file formats and to implement new API to replace some of the deprecated API in mswindows 3.x. Sorry, i know that's boring, but i suspect it is true.
To be honest i think they are worried that if they release the code for windows 3.11, a team of hackers will get together and make some GPL version of windows which will threaten to take what part of the market has not already gone to the BSD/Linux mob.
can you imagine a GPL development model fueled mswindows, based on mswindows 3.11? before any of that registry stuff? all the mistakes in windows since about 1993 could be identified, avoided and generally better solutions could be made. bad code could be replaced and within a few years a monster open source windows could be competing with the 'real' thing. of course by this time the two windowss would not be all that intercompatible. there would be programs that ran on both of course, and all the open source programs (thunderbird, mozilla, openoffice.org) would have versions for both etc, but as you can see now, one would be free. and it would be more stable. and all the open source programs would run on it. and they would be free. and unlike linux it has two advantages:
1) it really is windows, so the sheep would not balk at using it
2) it really is windows, so an unspecified amount of windows software will actually run on it, as is. with no emulators.
that's why it will never happen.
i went to a happy place while reading this. to bad it will never happen.
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quote:
Originally posted by M. O'Brien:
Ok... There are three memory manager
files:
himem.exe
emm386
FXDMS
Emm386 works together with himem.exe. FXDMS is not compatible with either one. FXDMS works with DOS32 programs like SEAL. Emm386 works with older programs like GEM (including FreeGEM).
and do these memory managers have to be obtained separately or are they customarily part of the OS?
what's usual procedure for using them if one wants to run programs that need one and programs that need the other?
also the fact of me using FreeDOS may add a new dimension since it is a newer DOS and is written from scratch, it may know how to use more memory than 640k (what idiot thought that would be sufficient (http://www.leonine.com/~lion/pub_papers/itphil/node3.html)) and may not need a memory manager, but will programs which expect a memory manager be able to run on it? will FreeDOS have some interface to those programs which make them all think they are using their favourite memory manager?
i don't know.
in fact i still know nothing about them! (http://smile.gif)
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well a couple of clickthroughs from a link avello posted and
http://www.freedos.org/freedos/news/technote/161.html (http://www.freedos.org/freedos/news/technote/161.html)
which is a lot less promising than it looks. FreeDOS version and hardware are radically different from what i hope to use, but i will keep looking.
probably won't be doing this till next month after my next assignment's in.
edit: http://www.freedos.org/freedos/news/technote/200.html (http://www.freedos.org/freedos/news/technote/200.html)
bugger! i don't fulfill criteria number 1!
[ September 04, 2003: Message edited by: Calum ]
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ok, what's the deal with DR-DOS anyway?
i can't figure it out from here:
http://drdos.com/products.html (http://drdos.com/products.html)
i got a full download of DR-DOS 7.03 and there was source code too for free, so why are they charging?
anybody know how to find out the licence for DR-DOS? i haven't looked at the disks i now have of DR-DOS too carefully yet so maybe the licence is on them...
perhaps i will be using dr-dos after all depending on how open source it turns out to be and how incompatible freeDOS turns out to be.
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quote:
Originally posted by Calum:
and do these memory managers have to be obtained separately or are they customarily part of the OS?
what's usual procedure for using them if one wants to run programs that need one and programs that need the other?
also the fact of me using FreeDOS may add a new dimension since it is a newer DOS and is written from scratch, it may know how to use more memory than 640k (what idiot thought that would be sufficient (http://www.leonine.com/~lion/pub_papers/itphil/node3.html)) and may not need a memory manager, but will programs which expect a memory manager be able to run on it? will FreeDOS have some interface to those programs which make them all think they are using their favourite memory manager?
i don't know.
in fact i still know nothing about them! (http://smile.gif)
The memory managers I mention are specifically part of the freeDOS project and are included with the distributions. They are described in the included freedos help files. They must be loaded in the config.sys file, so the mutual exclusivity is a problem: You must edit config.sys and reboot to change the extended memory manager. You have the option of using non-FreeDOS memory managers such as the one from MSDOS or a 3rd party memory manager.
FreeDOS is a 16bit operating system. Like MSDOS, PCDOS, DRDOS, it is limited by 640k conventional memory. However, like the other DOS, it can use extended memory managers to use higher RAM. Like the other DOS systems, it can run 32 bit DOS programs to use all computer memory (SEAL is an example of this).
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hmm, i wonder if there's some DOS howto archive i can look this up at. the DOS stuff on the net seems to be laid out totally differently from the linux stuff...
re: Qube screenies:
http://freshmeat.net/screenshots/20535/ (http://freshmeat.net/screenshots/20535/)
http://www.sourtimes.org/coders/qube.png (http://www.sourtimes.org/coders/qube.png)
that second one looks nothing like what i had, in fact it looks like an old fvwm or xfce screenshot to be honest.
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With all the comments made in this thread about the Windows registry, I thought I would add my comment about it:
The Windows registry is the most stupid thing I've ever seen.
Before the registry became a very common thing to mess around with (which happened soon after Win95 and even more with Win98), the way to make programs run automatically upon logon was to put them in the Start Menu\Startup folder. Simple! But with the registry came a key called RUN. Whatever commands you put in run will run automatically when you logon to Windows. I suspect this was done to give people less control over what is started when they turn on the computer and boot to Windows. Today, 95% of the software that makes itself run automatically upon logon uses the Run key in the registry. The startup folders in the Start Menu are barely used by anyone anymore. Not only does this give you less control over YOUR OWN computer, but also contributes to bloat which in turn contributes to system slowdown.
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Hi guys!
> That windows is shit, yes in that one they dont > spy on you because I dont think Internet was
> alaviable at that time.
Haha, I'm surfing the net since 1994...
> there's no registry (a HUGE problem with later > windowss in my opinion) and few dlls.
Huh?? My registry is about 4000 lines long and DLLs are nearly 1000. I'm talking about 3.1, not any so-called "Windows Operating System".
> and this screen willl explain what happens on
> everywindows and will never be fixed
> http://www.gaby.de/win3x/screens/nov01.gif (http://www.gaby.de/win3x/screens/nov01.gif)
No, this doesn't happen on everywindows. This only happens if you try to fake NT and run a 32bit exe file, which is intelligent enough to notice that something is weired about this "NT".
Look at the taskbar and you'll see that a task named "lie about Win32" is currently running. You can use it to fake either NT or W95.
> um, i actually suspect (although i am not in
> any way betting on it) that that shot has been > doctored.
Good for you that you don't bet. There's nothing doctored.
> the URL that it's windows
> 3x but look, it has a windows start menu and
> toolbar which was not included in windows until > windows 95
If you look at the page title instead (http://www.gaby.de/win3x/escreens.htm), you'll see that these are Calmira Screenshots. I don't know any 3.1 user who still uses Program Manager...
Would you?????
Bye, bye
Gaby
(webmistress of win31.de)
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i don't know any 3.1 user at all!
well, i know very little about DOS and haven't tried calmira yet. was a little thrown at the windows error considering all the other stuff in the picture is later add on software then.
Gaby, your site is a very good one, by the way, if i do get a windows 3.11 or dos system installed, your site will be on my favourites list.
[ September 08, 2003: Message edited by: Calum ]
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Hi Calum,
> i don't know any 3.1 user at all!
Oh, now you know at least one :))
> well, i know very little about DOS and haven't
> tried calmira yet.
Calmira is really great. At first sight it looks like Win9x, but it's a thousand times better (http://smile.gif)
You can turn it upside down and shake it and it just keeps on running (same for 3.1 itself).
For those who are curious:
http://www.calmira.de/ (http://www.calmira.de/)
> Gaby, your site is a very good one, by the way,
> if i do get a windows 3.11 or dos system
> installed, your site will be on my favourites
> list.
Oh, thanks!!
Bye, bye
Gaby
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well i did indeed install a windows.
it is caldera dr-dos 7.03 with the gnu tools and some of the exe and com files from freedos copied over the top (but caldera's edit.com kicks the ass off of freedos' edit.exe so i kept it, and a lot of other stuff, dr-dos seems kind of picky about being ripped to pieces) with windows for workgroups 3.11 on top (dell oem version), and calmira II 3.3 (yes? c33 was the name of the zip file) on top.
Yes the look is identical to windows 95 but it is a shitload more configurable and by fuck it's fast compared to any windows i have ever used!
so dr-dos is kind of open source, calmira and the gnu stuff is all open source, windows isn't.
I think if the calmira people and the freedos people could meet in the middle we would be starting to see this dream open source windows i was talking about before.
i am still baffled about how to get it to connect to the internet using my dialup thing (still haven't tried though to install winsock and all that, will not be using IE so can't follow any of the howtos (yes they ALL assume i use IE 3, which comes with own tcp stack and microsoft java virtual machine apparently))
screenshot to follow when i have some program capable of doing images in windows 3.11, i wonder if gimp and moz and all that will run under it?
and how do i get the gnu compiler collection and install open source source packages on it?
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thats awesome... i should try that.... hmmm... *looks at computer that doesnt do shit beside him*
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Im gonna get that if I ever get a Win3.1 OS
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Calum, for gcc compiler you would want DJGPP (http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/) which is a DOS/windows port of gcc.
There's alot of nice options for djgpp. I'd suggest you get RHIDE and maybe the RSXWIN libraries.
You really should get a DPMI running in DOS to run the 32-bit protected mode programms generated by DJGPP. Win 3.1x has a built in DPMI server but it is only active when windows 3.1x is loaded and you are working in a DOS box. I think DR-DOS came with one but if you want an open source version go with CWSDPMI.