Message-ID: <3718DF44.354755E4@lycosmail.com>
Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 15:21:40 -0400
From: Adam Schrotenboer <ajschrotenboer AT lycosmail DOT com>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (Win98; U)
X-Accept-Language: en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: DJGPP: the future is... FreeDos? DJ-DOS? Linux?
References: <3 DOT 0 DOT 1 DOT 16 DOT 19990408222215 DOT 24978170 AT shadow DOT net><7ejuap$q73$1 AT news DOT ececs DOT uc DOT edu><7el3lq$j9k$1 AT nnrp1 DOT dejanews DOT com><7elpkf$5sp$1 AT news DOT ececs DOT uc DOT edu><199904092134 DOT RAA06265 AT envy DOT delorie DOT com> <3 DOT 0 DOT 1 DOT 16 DOT 19990410085634 DOT 1e57aa0e AT shadow DOT net> <7eo156$nn4$1 AT news DOT ececs DOT uc DOT edu> <370FBA58 DOT B2673296 AT cartsys DOT com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

Nate Eldredge wrote:

> [Becoming OT]
>
> Marvin G Wise Jr wrote:
> >
> > > There is only one danger: You must read the instructions for
> > > partitioning VERY CAREFULLY. You can lose everything you have
> > > if you don't do what it says. I didn't lose a byte. FIPS is good.

> >
> > repartitioning of hard drives, what a pain....isn't there a way to setup a
> > hard drive without having to redo everything? would it be possible, if
> > someone made a new OS, to allow for compatibility with various file/disk
> > formats, that way it could be installed without the hassle of
> > repartitioning?
>
> Some Linux distributions support UMSDOS, which is a Real File System
> hacked on top of MSDOS/FAT (using a magic file to store the stuff
> (symlinks, permissions, long names, etc) that can't be represented by
> MSDOS).  This way you can drop the Linux stuff in a directory of your
> DOS drive.  However, it's probably not a great idea for the long term;
> performance isn't the best, and some of the restrictions of MSDOS show
> through.  It's fine if you want to experiment, though.
>

RedHat 5.2 also has support for VFAT (which allows LFNs, while UMSDOS doesn't),
though it still requires that it be installed on a Linux partition. VFAT support
just allows it to access Win9X partitions.