From: rsrodger@wam.umd.edu (Yamanari)
Subject: Re: DOS 6 Beta Looks for OS/2!!!!!!!!
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 05:44:49 GMT

In article <1i5tblINN694@tamsun.tamu.edu> bdubbs@cs.tamu.edu (Bruce Dubbs) writes:
>[I deleted a lot--I hope the attribution is correct.]

	Nope.  It was me. 
>|> 
>|> 	Might I offer a suggestion?  Perhaps the 
>|> 	warning was to prevent the user from installing the DOS6 
>|> 	beta using the Stacker-like disk compression program.  This
>|> 	would, quite simply, render OS/2 unusable.  
>
>Really?  I have 260Mb on my system - none of it FAT.  If I took one
>partition--say 20Mb and made it a DOS 6 FAT bootable partition, that
>would make OS/2 unusable?  The compressed FAT partition might not be
>accessable by OS/2, but that hardly makes OS/2 'unusable.'


	How stupid of me.  Post a message with quite obvious meaning,
	I should have expected that someone would be unable to understand
	it.

	Obviously, I was speaking of users that use FAT (and/or dual boot).


>By the way, besides disk compression, why would I want DOS 6? What are
>the features that make me want to change from OS/2?  Memory management
>is a non issue.  About the only thing I can think of is if I was
>developing software and I wanted to check DOS 6 compatability.


	I can't imagine.  I have no use for DOS6 whatsoever.  The disk
	compression is not going to be any better than the DRDOS6 (what 
	I use, when dual booting) equivalent, and I prefer Stacker
	(which I use instead--anthough 3.0 has left me sort of underwhelmed).
	Memory management is irrelavent--I only dual boot to play OS/2
	incompatible games (Comanche: Maximum Overkill--buy it) and
	run Windows3.1 (which will, hopefully, change when 2.1 comes out)--
	memory management is pretty much irrelavent for either.  

	I can't imagine that it will offer anything that I'm really
	looking for (to be specific, I'm interested in using volume
	LABELS to reference a disk rather than drive letters, a la
	commodore Amiga, and an assign command that imitates AmigaDos's
	assign command), not is it likely to offer anything that 4dos
	doesn't already (aliases come to mind) offer _right now_.

	DOS6 will probably not be the barnstormer that DOS5 was, simply
	because DOS5 is more than good enough for most of the people
	out there running DOS.  People running Windows don't need
	to worry about most of the things dos6 offers (other than
	disk compression), as memory management is pretty much irrelaventr
	(and Windows seems to deliver better DOS window sizes than I ever
	got with Desqview, and both pale next to my tweaked OS/2).  

	DRDOS has been long rumored to be working on a protected 
	multitasking version of DRDOS for general release that isn't
	plagued by the incompatibilites that DR's earlier efforts
	in that field had.  They've also ben rumored (Novell, now,
	I guess) to be working on a Windows clone.  (Although, if 
	"Viewmax" is to DOS5's shell that DRWindows is to Windows,
	MS hasn't got a worry in the world).  

	I suspect neither of these are true.  Novell would probably 
	be happy to rid itself of the licencing and support headaches
	and just concentrate on it's new UNIX toy.

-- 
	Blaming "society" for your problems is like blaming clouds for rain.
         ---  boycott == censorship == closed mindedness == cowardice  ---
	      "Psalms 23:1  The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want."  
		Shepherds are for sheep.   -----      Pain teaches.