Mail Archives: opendos/1997/05/09/11:08:49
On Thu, 8 May 1997, Mr M S Aitchison wrote:
> (b) Have better security than MS products (you may or may not be aware
> of the hideous security problems with MS products, but for Joe
> Average, the ability to lock important files away from kids on
> the home computer and the prevention of viruses is probably
> a good starting point).
Exactly! For those wondering why I'd be wanting multi-user and security,
its precisely for that case! I use Linux at home and my flatmates uses it
to surf the Internet with Netscape (each of them with their own bookmarks,
subscribed newsgroups and configuration), my girlfriend stores personal
info in a directory she chmodded 700, my phonebook doesn't get erase by an
unknowing flatmate (ARGH! It happened once back when I was in Win95)...
Each programs writes its configuration in dotfiles in the home directory.
Things that require specialized software like multiple mailboxes (for a
family for example) on a Win95 system is simply the normal thing for a
multi-user system. Plus, it would be really useful in a work environment,
that point-of-sale computers would be protected by a "strong" login (i.e.
more secure than Windows 95 login).
> 1. Fix all bugs up to latest Novell DOS 7 patch, tidy source, and organise
> people/distribution/ftp sites so we can make a start on the rest.
Really is the first thing to do. Somewhat tied with point 7, development
tools.
> 2. Detect VFAT and DRDOS-style uses of those previously-unused bits in
> the FAT directory entries, to at least stop OpenDOS thinking LFN
> files are protected, and preferrably giving us long filenames as
> well as those user-group-world permissions (as DR MultiDOS actually
> had before bits of code were taken out).
Hmm... Yes, Caldera has the sources to MultiDOS too, and all the other
Concurrent things... I'd like to see that soon! ;-)
> 5. OpenDOS should work really well with Linux. Not everybody needs to
> be a Unix fan, but there are projects like SMP support that are so
> far ahead of anything we could hope for, the best first step to a
> decent 32-bit DOS is to provide seemless integration with Linux;
> allow 32-bit apps to run from conventional DOS interfaces, while
> fussy legacy 16-bit apps carry on running!
I think the concept of Linux being used as "heavy duty server" while
OpenDOS workstations connect to it is a good idea. But putting SMP support
into OpenDOS isn't really it... It's more likely to run on 286, 386 and
486 than twin-Pentium Pro box (those will run Linux)... ;-)
> 7. I personally want to see a darn good (okay, reasonably good) set of
> development tools (including a MASM, C and Java compilers) that are
> easy to use yet the programs are reusable on lots of other systems.
> The trouble getting OpenDOS to compile should be enough to convince
> us we need a program development environment where we only need to
> write the code once, and reuse it for a good many years. "C" (Ansi
> or K&R) seemed to promise that, but nowadays most programs are less
> portable than Turbo Pascal 5.5! Of course, this isn't just about
> finding some free compiler and assembler, but issues like Java and
> MS changes to APIs when it suits them, etc.
Java should be possible some day. For 32 bit programs, this isn't much of
an issue, DJGPP's already here... ;-) The problem is finding a good 16 bit
compiler for the pre-386 machines out there to compile their programs on.
Pierre Phaneuf
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