Any mention of what hardware it works on? Can't recall whether linux still has soft-float capability, so an FPU might be required. I also believe that 386 support was dropped from the kernel some time ago, so 486+ I suppose.

Error 0x7CF wrote on 2020-10-01, 09:12:

Can't recall whether linux still has soft-float capability, so an FPU might be required.

Linux kernel has an option to provide FPU emulation, nowadays it's meant mostly for some embedded systems that may still lack FPU.

Just stumbled onto this...

Akuma wrote on 2020-10-09, 06:58:

Just stumbled onto this...

That comment by this BobZanis user is golden! 😁

BobZanis 30 Sep:
"Should the acronym be LSD, Linux Subsystem for DOS"

Wow, great find 😀 , did anyone try it ?

Merged threads.

BTW, I can't see anything impressive about this...
Booting Linux from DOS has been possible since the very beginning, see Loadlin.
And then there's Dosemu.
All the new stuff in that "DSL" boils down to suppressing all the boot messages, so it looks "seamless".

Stiletto wrote on 2020-10-09, 11:56:

Merged threads.

Thanks, Stiletto! ^^

Grzyb wrote on 2020-10-09, 22:45:

BTW, I can't see anything impressive about this... Booting Linux from DOS has been possible since the very beginning, see Loadli […]
Show full quote

BTW, I can't see anything impressive about this...
Booting Linux from DOS has been possible since the very beginning, see Loadlin.
And then there's Dosemu.
All the new stuff in that "DSL" boils down to suppressing all the boot messages, so it looks "seamless".

I remember this! There was this utility to load Linux from an MS-DOS partition..
Minix can also boot from DOS, by the way. I used this option to boot Minix in DOSBox along ago ! 😁
Last, but not least, BEOS 5 Personal Edition worked that way. It booted from an image file in DOS.

By the way, MS-DOS Player and old CP/M emulators worked in a similar fashion.
You could run programs by passing the executable as an argument to the loader (MSDOS DOSPROG.EXE or CPM CPMAPP.CMD).
"LSD" works similar, but keeps Linux running all the time above 1MB, I believe.

So it's not of much use on a real world DOS system, unless the DOS and DOS programs are optimal configured for Expanded Memory.
A real EMS board (which supports EEMS ideally. Or LIM4 if there's nothing better) would not get into the way with Extended Memory.
So in theory, perhaps old DesqView could be used to run both DOS and Linux programs in separate windows.

By the way, DOS 2 had some Unix features from „XEDOS“ (made up from XENIX-DOS ?).
Like handling system devices as files or using the slash instead of the backslash (A:/> vs A>, A:\>.
These features were partially undocumented and removed in later versions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo8NG8T4rWs

The tradition of trying to run Linux on everything, whether it makes sense or not, is still alive I guess.

If I install Linux on my microwave, maybe I can fix the interface.

Jo22 wrote on 2020-10-10, 05:45:

. […]
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.

So it's not of much use on a real world DOS system, unless the DOS and DOS programs are optimal configured for Expanded Memory.
A real EMS board (which supports EEMS ideally. Or LIM4 if there's nothing better) would not get into the way with Extended Memory.
So in theory, perhaps old DesqView could be used to run both DOS and Linux programs in separate windows.

DesqViewX That X is important. DesqViewX runs Win3.1 in an Xwindow that could be shared with Linux or other *nix like system running XWindows at the time and networked to the DesqViewX box.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-12-17, 06:21:

Jo22 wrote on 2020-10-10, 05:45:

. […]
Show full quote

.

So it's not of much use on a real world DOS system, unless the DOS and DOS programs are optimal configured for Expanded Memory.
A real EMS board (which supports EEMS ideally. Or LIM4 if there's nothing better) would not get into the way with Extended Memory.
So in theory, perhaps old DesqView could be used to run both DOS and Linux programs in separate windows.

DesqViewX That X is important. DesqViewX runs Win3.1 in an Xwindow that could be shared with Linux or other *nix like system running XWindows at the time and networked to the DesqViewX box.

Yup. I made a short video of that feature about 3 years ago. 😅
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOYcY6oeBhY

Normal DESQView also can multi task Real-Mode Windows quite well, IMHO.
Another video experiment involved multi-tasking Windows 2.x and Windows 3.x simultanously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRPCGWGSqD4

The whole thing ran in VirtualBox, though, with QEMM 7, I think. 😀
So I'm not 100% sure how things would have performed on a 286/386 PC
with an EEMS Expanded Memory Board like the AST RAMPage..

Linux has had Dosemu for decades. Some distros distributed a version of DR Dos with it.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-12-17, 07:37:

Linux has had Dosemu for decades. Some distros distributed a version of DR Dos with it.

Thanks for the information!
Running this DSL in MS-DOS/DOSemu on Linux would be cool, I guess.. 😄

Jo22 wrote on 2020-12-17, 09:19:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-12-17, 07:37:

Linux has had Dosemu for decades. Some distros distributed a version of DR Dos with it.

Thanks for the information!
Running this DSL in MS-DOS/DOSemu on Linux would be cool, I guess.. 😄

dosemu2 has been created with a different license to the original version https://dosemu2.github.io/dosemu2/

Original dosemu page http://www.dosemu.org/

Jo22 wrote on 2020-12-17, 09:19:

Running this DSL in MS-DOS/DOSemu on Linux would be cool, I guess.. 😄

I don't think it's possible.
DOSemu works via V86 mode, so it can't run any software which directly controls the protected mode.
For running a protected mode OS, full virtualization is necessary - so, perhaps Dosbox?

Grzyb wrote on 2020-12-18, 12:20:

I don't think it's possible. DOSemu works via V86 mode, so it can't run any software which directly controls the protected mode. […]
Show full quote

Jo22 wrote on 2020-12-17, 09:19:

Running this DSL in MS-DOS/DOSemu on Linux would be cool, I guess.. 😄

I don't think it's possible.
DOSemu works via V86 mode, so it can't run any software which directly controls the protected mode.
For running a protected mode OS, full virtualization is necessary - so, perhaps Dosbox?

I admit I barely used DOSemu before.
Last time I tried was when kernal 2.x was current, I believe.

So does this imply that DOSemu is incompatible with EMM386/QEMM/386MAX etc?
If so, it must have been pretty useless and it's no wonder it was so neglected.
- Unless it had some sort of real-mode compatible "emulation" of UMBs and EMS.
Or does it support DPMI somehow, by any chance? 😕
— I recall that Win-OS/2 could run in DOSemu,
because it was patched by IBM to be an DPMI client rather than a DPMI host.

If it can do DPMI, the Linux kernal in DSL (or "LSD"? 😉 ) *perhaps* could be adapted for this, not sure.

Jo22 wrote on 2020-12-18, 13:25:

So does this imply that DOSemu is incompatible with EMM386/QEMM/386MAX etc? If so, it must have been pretty useless and it's no […]
Show full quote

So does this imply that DOSemu is incompatible with EMM386/QEMM/386MAX etc?
If so, it must have been pretty useless and it's no wonder it was so neglected.
- Unless it had some sort of real-mode compatible "emulation" of UMBs and EMS.
Or does it support DPMI somehow, by any chance? 😕
— I recall that Win-OS/2 could run in DOSemu,
because it was patched by IBM to be an DPMI client rather than a DPMI host.

DOSemu is like other Virtual Dos Machines from the 90s.
So, can't run HIMEM.SYS, EMM386.EXE, and other such stuff.
Instead, the VDM provides XMS, EMS, DPMI services.
Which is enough even for running well-behaved DOS extenders like DOS4GW, but not EMX - use RSX instead.

Loading another OS from Dos is not a new idea. That was how Novell Netware was launched, as far as I remember. I have not used the server system, since 1995. Back then I was given the task of installing it on a 486, because a sadistic boss. I was studying computing and the boss thought that just because we (my fellow students at the internship) knew how to install a CD drive in Dos, then we automatically knew everything about computing. So we were given the full set of manuals (motherload of paper) a set of install floppies and a computer that had to be build first.

What a freaking week....
The truth was, that we had no idea how this server system worked, and of course had never seen anything like the install process anywere else. We were not given any training, and all the manuals were in English only. F**king ducebag, the boss were.