REAL Re: Distributions questions

[Cristi Mitrana <cristi.mitrana@gmail.com>]

On 9/19/05, Stas Sergeev <stsp@aknet.ru> wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> UNIREA Sannicolau Mare wrote:
> > I.e. how can we make latest version of xdosemu to work on RedHat6,
> > RedHat7 and RedHat8?
> IIRC RedHat6 and 7 has the 2.2 linux kernels.

 RedHat 7.1 had 2.4.2 right out of the box

> Dosemu should work on those, but there may be
> a few problems, mostly with the DPMI apps.
> And apart from bugs and missing features, the
> DPMI on 2.2 was IIRC very, very slow.
> Additionally, IIRC RedHat7 had the broken gcc
> that used to miscompile dosemu, but you can use
> a binary distribution.

 They fixed that with several updates, but that's a long time ago :).
RH 7.0 was the culprit, but a binary distribution could be (g)libc incompatible.

> On RedHat8 it should work almost normally, but
> the kernel upgrade is still recommended.
> 
> > Or what older xdosemu versions work on such systems?
> Older dosemus is a darkness. Unless your tasks
> for it are really trivial and not mission-critical
> (eg you can tolerate the frequent crashes, and
> you don't afraid of a security holes), you almost
> certainly don't want to have an older dosemu on any
> of your machines.
> 
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> 
In my experience, debian provides a cleaner and simpler
default installation, about 200mb for a basic setup (this includes networking).
Also, 2.6 is included and also dosemu is up to date.
I have several 'old' computers with the current debian stable distro and
they work without a hitch (without Xwindows, I have to say).
 If networking is a good option then you can install something like LTSP
(I know for a fact that some people using LTSP are running DOS apps
via dosemu for a living :) and have a more poweful server which
handles all the load and processing needs of the clients. All
(x)dosemu instances
cand be run over the net and the workstation clients could be as dumb as an P1.
This can assure that you can run a modern distro with all the updates
on the server
and you can upgrade in one step the application used. Depending on the number
of workstations and their distribution this could be a nice option.

hth,

-- 
mitu