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DR-DOS 8.1 (Announce)

posted by Steve Homepage E-mail, US, 22.11.2007, 14:42

> Just a quick look at the Vetusware site shows a lot of old (!) commercial
> apps as well as some (mostly outdated) freeware. In particular, though, I
> wonder why anybody would want the following instead of better
> alternatives:
Random notes:

> TASM (LZASM, FASM, NASM, OCTASM)
 Agreed. Good TASM-compatible assemblers are available.

> ACROREAD (XPDF, DOSPDF)
 Old Acrobat Reader defintitely useless. Installation crashes WinXP, doesn't reliably read PDFs less than 10+ years old... I would only add Ghostscript as another modern alternative - very nice program, once you get used to it.

> AUTOCAD (DESICAD?)
 DESI not nearly as powerful as AutoCAD, which was a great prog under DOS - and ridiculously expensive. But nobody needs DOS AutoCAD anyway. Professionals (architects mostly) will need more modern graphical CAD programs, non-professionals will find it too much and too hard to learn.

> AZTEC C (OpenWatcom, Dev86DOS, Turbo C, DJGPP, CC386)
 Was written for very weak machines, a waste of hardware now.

> BC++ (see "Aztec C" above)
 Yes.

> BRIEF (VIM, VILE, JASSPA, TDE, FED, FTE)
 Editors are an esthetic thing - old programmers hate to learn new ones. But since the old guys already have BRIEF, and newer editors are more powerful and more flexible, old BRIEF for free means nothing.

> MS F77 (GNU/DJGPP G77)
 As to MS specifically - not one of the best Fortrans. GNU and OpenWatcom are better. There is a body of old Fortran code that will still compile under F77, but for new work go with gfortran

> FreeDOS B9RC3 (uh ... my updated mini distro? anyone??)
 Sorry, no thanks.

> NORTON CMNDR (DOSZip, DC-SK)
 Yes. Enhanced derivatives are free and available everywhere.

> Personal C (Desmet C)
 Both, as per Aztec C, above.

> PKUNZIP (Info-Zip, p7zip)
 Right - nobody needs PKZIP anymore.

> Zortech C (Digital Mars w/ HXRT or stubbed by WDOSX?)
 Special case. DM is essentially Walter Bright's upgrade to his own Zortech product, and free besides. Easy decision.

> Granted, if any original copyright holders want to make this stuff free,
> be my guest! Otherwise, I'm sticking to freeware. (I'm sure Steve
> knows of a bunch of stuff I'm forgetting, too.)
What I really think, is that people who don't already have the old software would mostly be wasting their time in getting it and trying to use it. Most software from the 1980s, even a lot from the 1990s, is crap now. The truth is, people use old software out of habit, not because it's better than what is available now. Not because of money either - free software is at a high level now, higher than most shareware and a lot of commercial software from 5-10 years ago.

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