Uhm... excuse me? Why? Is there anyone even using DOS for anything serious these days?

mrweasel 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Perhaps not serious, but I think people gravitate towards older systems these days because they are easier to conceptualize. It's not unrealistic for a single person to have a complete grasp of e.g. the C64 and it's programming environment. DOS is similarly constraint, but also easier for you to form a more or less complete mental model around.

Some people love computers and making them do weird stuff, older computers make certain tasks feel more manageable.

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sedatk 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Most computers in Turkey come with FreeDOS preinstalled because there's a law that states all computers must be sold with an operating system. FreeDOS turns out to be the cheapest and easiest.

That's why you don't let people who have never touched a computer write tech laws. You get results like this.

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Dwedit 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The really weird case is where the computer isn't actually compatible with DOS, so they put in a locked-down Linux distro that emulates FreeDOS.

	▲	ronsor 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Wasn't it Dell or HP that did this? IIRC it was FreeDOS-on-QEMU-on-X11-on-Linux.

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unleaded 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Those types of laws aren't all that bad.. they got us this: https://segaretro.org/Dottori_Kun

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rwmj 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wish that was the case where I live. I'm looking for a new laptop and the mainstream ones still come with the Windows Tax.

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wk_end 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Is there a reason they don't go with Ubuntu or something like that instead?

	▲	jordand 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Linux drivers and certification is a whole lot of extra work and complexity compared to FreeDOS. Years ago, Nettops were sold with FreeDOS where the components didn't support Linux that well.
	▲	prmoustache 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I guess they don't want to get support's call. DOS looks like firmware for non techies.

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wk_end 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Who said anything about "serious"?

(FWIW: I suspect there are more than a few old industrial control systems and such out there that are still running DOS, just because of an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude)

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kjs3 5 hours ago | parent [-]

My brother is in manufacturing. DOS is everywhere. Older things too (PDP-11? DG Nova? Seen both, semi-recently). Not just because "ain't broke, don't fix", but because when you have a cloth dying machine or brick forming machine you spent >US$5M for, that is often a bespoke install for your plant, you don't replace it because some guy who prolly slings Javascript all day sez "DOS is oooold, boomer".

	▲	zozbot234 an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		These DOS machines for industrial control could probably be replaced by an Arduino or a far more reliable MCU, whereas running an actual legacy PC as a business-critical component in manufacturing has to be a bit of a nightmare by now. AI could probably do a good enough job of working out how the legacy DOS executables were intended to work.
	▲	ale42 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Given the implications, I guess nobody is going to touch those setups to put an SDL-based program on them, though...

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mikepurvis 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Hacker News

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gbin 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The real question is "why not?" :)

	▲	spijdar 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think this PR is awesome, and I can totally see myself playing around with this at some point. Being able to create DOS executables of SDL projects is just ... cool! But I do wonder about the practicality. This would, I presume (never done DOS development, never touched a memory extender) only run on 386+ CPUs, and maybe more importantly, probably require a newer CPU than that to run anything non-trivial at acceptable performance. So I wonder how many "real DOS machines" this can practically target. Still, it is massively cool.

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zozbot234 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's a simple enough implementation that implicitly helps document how SDL is supposed to work (DOS being a well understood platform by now). Plenty of reasons to maintain it based on that alone.

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kjs3 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Because it's fun, at least for certain folks? Crazy, right?

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queuebert 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There used to be stock exchanges running happily on DOS. Maybe there still are.

	▲	chaps 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Worked at an exchange in 2007/2008 and... we had systems still running from the 80s. Mostly tape audit stuff.
	▲	BirAdam 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Most use Linux now, and specifically RHEL. I did see some IBM z, but that was specifically for one old DB that handled oil pipeline stuff.

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jordand 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's a lot of interesting projects and even innovation going on making new games for old PCs/consoles. James Lambert and Kaze are doing fantastic work in the N64 space as one example (watch their videos on Youtube)

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benatkin 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

SDL is written in C. So it can support it without too much trouble. And some people are compiling stuff to run on DOS. So it makes sense. And your objection doesn't hold any water.

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reaperducer 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Uhm... excuse me? Why? Is there anyone even using DOS for anything serious these days?

Translation: "Stop liking things I don't like!"

	▲	spankibalt 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I suppose it's an issue of ignorance; even IT veterans often don't know that DOS was, and still is, the driver of many highly specialized industry applications, or an OS running the software of individuals as well as small business owners around the world.

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alnwlsn 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

because you can