From: arh14 AT cornell DOT edu Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 09:04:18 -0400 (EDT) X-Sender: arh14 AT travelers DOT mail DOT cornell DOT edu To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com Subject: Another reason for DOS/FreeDOS/DOS32, etc. In-Reply-To: <199904220405.AAA16237@delorie.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com X-Mailing-List: djgpp AT delorie DOT com X-Unsubscribes-To: listserv AT delorie DOT com Precedence: bulk Part of what I left out of my short, short message: Dos is not secure. Dos is not sophisticated (relatively speaking). BUT Dos is SIMPLE Dos is SMALL Dos is FAST! (direct hardware access) Dos is single-user The majority of "normal" computer users don't care about users and permissions and security levels and ownership. They don't need a multiuser system. Windows itself is complex enough. They just need something that makes their computer *work* (not even reliable it appears, although the simpler the OS the easier it is to make reliable!). And something that is fast is even better. By stripping away the features that the target audience doesn't care about, one can improve on those that they do. I think there is plenty of room (if not an imperitive) for a small, fast, simple OS (preferably 32 bit) that does everything one wants it to do and nothing one doesn't need. My concern is that while people are pitching Linux and other modern hi-tech operating systems as the Windows/DOS alternative, they miss the point that some people really *don't* need the included features and would *gladly* sacrifice them for performance, size, simplicity, etc. I don't see any player in this field right now. There is no Windows/DOS alternative that is as simple and fast (not to say Windows is that fast), not to mention fully backward compatible with all the thousands of DOS programs. Bigger (in feature count, sophistication) is not necessarily better. Aaron