ref: Microsoft barriers to Linux adoption on the desktop

[Mike McCarty]

Gordon Keehn wrote:
> Mike McCarty wrote:

> You agree, so there's no need for further discussion.
> 
>    Would someone show me their copy of Windows running on an 8086/8088?

Hmm. As I recall, Widows 1.0 was pretty bad. I no longer have a copy.
I do have a copy of DesqView, which I have on occasion run on my 8088.
It's been a while now. The 8088 machine is almost (but not quite)
retired. The hard disc is dead, and it runs off of floppy only.
5 1/4 inch, of course.

> Or for that matter an 80286, except as an interesting toy?  I'm willing 
> to stipulate that MS DOS ran well on those processors.  As did PC DOS, 
> and DRDOS, and CPM/86 (and probably a few more that I'm missing).  I 

Good. Glad you are willing to concede that. NB, that I never said
that running on old machines makes MicroSoft products in all ways
better than Linux. It just makes them better than Linux for that
one thing.

I have machines I run MSDOS 6.0 on today. In fact, one of them
is up 24/7 with an UPS, cranking away.

> know a professional writer who still uses the DOS version of Word 
> Perfect, because it does everything she needs, with no learning curve.  

Doesn't surprise me. OTOH, writers are notorious for using outdated
technology. I wouldn't be surprised to find that some of them still
use manual typewriters.

> That doesn't mean I have to (or even want to) use the same tools I used 
> in 1980.  I don't even want to go back to using Windows 3.1 (which only 
> ran on '386 or better processors).

Windows 3.1 was notorious for "general protection faults". But I still
have a copy. I don't ever run my copy of Windows 2.something on my
286 laptop anymore.

But MSDOS is very much still alive at my house. I also note that
there are the dosbox and dosemu+freedos projects for Linux.

Mike
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