Date: Mon, 22 Dec 1997 12:36:11 +1300
From: physmsa AT cantua DOT canterbury DOT ac DOT nz (Mr M S Aitchison)
Subject: Re:  opendos vs linux
To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
Message-id: <199712212336.MAA03301@cantua.canterbury.ac.nz>
Precedence: bulk

I use both at home and work. We still boot DOS (often Novell DOS 7
though) on some PC's in labs connected to equipment, because bigger
operating systems (like Linux) get in the way of data collection
(timing problems, make direct access to ports more difficult,
incompatibilities with some on-board firmware etc).  But most desktop
systems use OpenDOS via DOSEMU under Linux (although they have a boot
manager, this way of running DOS programmers is good enough in most
cases).  The latest orders from on high are to not install Linux (or
OpenDOS) on most of the new systems, but to have only NT, but I digress.

OpenDOS has some advantages over Linux, earlier Novell/DR-DOS and other
operating systems, but it depends what you want to do.  The key
question might be: why would I need to boot in OpenDOS mode when I can
run OpenDOS within Linux?   There certainly are programs that don't
work properly within DOSEMU, including Windows 3.1x, some games, and if
you develop protected-mode applications (or any DOS program that
accesses the hardware in curiuosly low-level ways) then you will
probably need to boot under OpenDOS without Linux (and also boot
various other flavours of DOS to make sure it works well for general
distribution).  I don't run many games, and when I develop software I
either use Borland compilers for "small portable" utilities that run
nicely under any DOS and DOSEMU, or I use gnu C on a Unix system for
"serious". I don't mess with Mr Inbetween!  Therefore it is enough for
me to run OpenDOS under Linux.

In general, people find the command interpreter on OpenDOS more
understandable than Unix/Linux shells (especially if they come from a
DOS background), for example case sensitivity is confusing/annoying at
first.  But in the long run I'd say that Linux is better as far as
convenience (tab completion, good choice of GUIs, more feature-rich
shells) goes, and faster when you get beyond (say) an 8Mb 486DLC. 

To do justice to the question I'd have to know what equipement and 
applications are involved. For example I've commented before on a
question of which multitasking is best for BBSes, yet my order was
very wrong if certain assumptions weren't met (and the latest episode
in the saga involves limitations in the Linux/dosemu fossil driver,
which has pushed OS/2 far ahead of Linux+dosemu, in case anyone is
interested - which just proves that you get totally different views
of which is best when you delve into the details).

Jim Stevenson Ph.D <jims AT eos DOT arc DOT nasa DOT gov> wrote...
> Does OD have any advantage?

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Mark Aitchison,                 \_   Phone: +64 3 364-2947 home 337-1225
Dept of Physics & Astronomy,    </     Fax: +64 3 364-2469  or  364-2999
University of Canterbury,      /)   E-mail: phys169 AT csc DOT canterbury DOT ac DOT nz
Christchurch, NEW ZEALAND.    (/'     www.phys.canterbury.ac.nz/~physmsa
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