Re: Beta vs. Stable

Hello,

> Hi all,
>
> I just wanted to say a few words about this beta vs. 1.0 stable stuff.
> Some time ago it was myself who started/proposed a discussion about what
> features that should define a FreeDOS 1.0 release. There were many mails
> and a lot of dicussion about this, people contributed, I did a poll, and
> published the results.
> Three comments on this.
>
> (1) Years later I have to say that the wishes which at that moment
> believed to be essential and neccessary (maybe sufficient?) for a
> hypothetical FreeDOS "1.0" seem to have been fullfilled already. I just
> remember that these wishes were
> a) Patch some kernel bugs/problems which at that moment seemed critical,
> and that nowadays seem disappeared, such as problems with the
> redirector, with "MCB chain corrupt", and with FILES=.
> b) FORMAT not correctly working on HDs (I don't know about the status of
> this, but I seem to recall that it may be ok except for some occasional
> problems?)

There is a problem with performing an unconditional format.

> c) Problems with SYS and different floppy sizes
> d) Stabilise the XMS driver (FDXMS)
>
> In addition, some of the problems that were not so clearly (or
> majoritarily) believed to be critical have been also
> implemented/patched, such as: LBA support in the kernel, and the EMM
> (almost finished except for the lack of VCPI), unlike the lack of
.
.
.
.
> missing something important too. Of course, I am not
> pointing/criticising/etc when giving this opinion.
> The system has incrediblely improved lately. However, If I were a user
> knowing nothing about FreeDOS, and saw "1.0", that's what I would expect
> from it, but that we don't have:
> (a)  SCANDISK, CHKDSK or some other (16-bit) disk checking tool, as I
> consider this to be a "legacy" feature of any DOS

Probably would be a good idea.  I believe someone is working on this right
now.

> (b)  If a kernel FAT32 capable is offered, I would expect that FDISK is
> also FAT32 capable

FDISK has been FAT32 capable even before LBA support was added to it.  It
just needs configured to support FAT32.

> (c) I would expect that I can use both UMBs and DPMI without relying on
> external drivers (namely UMBPCI) that are not distributed with the system
> (d) I would expect that FreeCOM has all the basic commandline
> compatibility with MS-COMMAND, namely /On and /An to be implemented
> Out of this, the system looks enough to me...
>

Personally, I would say that FreeDOS is almost at 1.0.  Maybe we should try
to release version 1.0 on the 10th anniversary of the release of MSDOS 6.22?


Regards,

Brian Reifsnyder
[email protected]