22 Dec
2011
22 Dec
'11
12:04 p.m.
Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> (in reply to a message from Fred Cisin) wrote:
Steady on, old chap. Pop a few more dried frog pills
and calm down.
Hah! Then I probably need some too ;-) Are those already on sale in the drugstore in
Treacle Mine Road or do you still have to get them from the pharmaceutical institute of
the Unseen University?
(Another appreciator of TP humor outs himself...)
Joking aside, I have considered it. I honestly think a
decent
Win9x/NT-style DOS shell for Linux would help its adoption by Windows
techies moving across.
This is somewhat akin to the ideas I've been pushing around for some years now.
I'm thinking that porting a familiar OS to some 'obscure' (to the average
DOS/Wintel user) vintage architecture could serve to keep lots of these machines in active
service with the general public. (But then there wouldn't be so many around for us to
hoard - so that's perhaps why it isn't done...)
Of course there would be a need for software portability as well, so you might want to
include some sort of cross assembler or how-you'd-call-it in the package that, llke,
takes a win32-x86 executable and turns out a win32-sparc (or whatever) executable. No
idea if that's even remotely possible without excessive manual intervention...
The main snag being that C21 Windows techies
barely use the CLI at all and are not really skilled in it, whereas
1990s or even 1980s MS techies probably know Unix already.
So don't contend yourself with just the CLI - you don't have to. There is an
ongoing effort to create a FOSS Windows 2k/XP workalike named ReactOS. Currently that is
targeted at x86 only but I'm holding high hopes that its code base will inspire such
portery. "Windows" for all those systems that pack the horsepower to run it,
including but not limited to those that once were NT's target platforms - Alpha, RS/6k
(Siemens RM400), PPC (PowerStack) and Clipper (Intergraph) springing to mind immediately.
But I'd love a DOS shell for Linux, yes. If I had
the skills, I'd try to do it. Partly for the convenience, partly for fun, partly for
the sheer joy
of outraging traditional old-time Unix-heads. :?)
Well put. Any of these on ist own would make enough of a reason methinks ;-) Add the
conservation and ongoing practical utility of vintage hardware to that and let's see
where it goes.
Arno Kletzander
...sent from my HTC Magician PDA