🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct27.174247.11260@cs.uwp.edu>, yusuf@cs.uwp.edu (Muhammad Yusuf) writes:
> I own MS-DOS 5.0 and I love what it does for me.  I also tried out
> DR. DOS 6.0  but I was not very impressed.  I hated the EDITOR and it
> looked like a shareware thing.  But  I do believe that it has better
> memory management, so you get more free conventional memory...

Okay, the editor is better than EDLIN, but that isn't saying much. I guess the
problem is that DR didn't want to annoy commercial software writers by packaging
a product that is too good with DR-DOS.  That might sound strange, but it is
why the Data General DG-One's built-in editor was restricted, from what I read,
and a Sun rep was telling me the same sort of thing with their system-supplied 
software. But I think they could've included a search & replace facility, and
teh ability to define function keys, at least.

DR-DOS did a lot of good for DOS; it was stagnating due to the typical "we
haven't any competition, so why should we bother" syndrome. I don't want to
start a DR-MS war, though.  The important question you raise is:

How far is it *reasonable* to take a Personal Computer operating system? A few
kilobytes one way or another in 640K probably don't make a lot of difference,
in my opinion (okay, not everybody's, though). SuperStore *does* make a huge
difference, but MS-DOS seem to have copied that idea for MS-DOS 6. I still
prefer DR/Novell's "style" and support, by the way, and expect they'll
leap-frog with a vengence with a 6.1 or 7.0.  But we (the customers) have to be
careful what we end up getting from DOS; already a lot of people cannot easily
cope with the complexities of third-party memory managers and network cards in
upper memory and huge configuration files (hands up all those who *really*
understand how to configure all the Windows .INI files! Now, which of you
actually *use* your computers for real work most of the day??).  When it comes
to big, complicated operating systems, Unix has a huge head-start, and a lot
going for it.  But it is complicated, and Unix systems really need systems
administrators to shield the average user from the dirty details. I don't think
DOS should try to copy that; it should be even more user-friendly, if possible,
and concentrate on what it does well.  It could still have more features, all
right, but it has got to the stage where we really have to be a careful about
what is left *out* of DOS as what gets thrown in.

Mark Aitchison.