Message-Id: <199803210058.TAA17517@kanga.INS.CWRU.Edu>
Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 19:58:43 -0500 (EST)
From: jls11 AT po DOT cwru DOT edu (John L. Spetz)
To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Support for new filesystems: Fat32, ext2, etc.
Reply-To: jls11 AT po DOT cwru DOT edu (John L. Spetz)
Precedence: bulk

As I understand people considering an upgrade to the newest
version of Windoze 95 are warned that installing Fat32 as
the filesystem in place of VFat makes it impossible to use
prior versions of DOS.  I presume this is because old DOS
versions will not understand FAT32.  Is DR-DOS 7.x compatible
with the FAT32 system or only VFAT with lfn?  

Back when I more comprehensive release of DOS source code
was anticipated there was a lot of discussion about adding
support for non-DOS filesystems particularly the ext2 format
standard to Linux.  Given that Linux is a large portion of
Caldera's business is there any plan to add support for ext2
to DR-DOS in the future.  I understand bug squashing and 
Windoze 95/98 support are likely the top priorities now.
Is something like this on the todo list or is Caldera thinking
that DR-DOS will be primarily for thin clients AKA underpowered
PCs or NCs?

Is there any chance of more source seeing the light of day
on the Net once it is freed from Novell's version control?
To what extent is Caldera worried that OEMs will not 
register if the source is widely available?  Maybe if the
source for taskmgr was released it could be made more stable?