3 ms·

> with compilers that can that can do aggressive optimizations we're still talking about real-mode DOS here. Most of those optimizations aren't going to work.

> with compilers that can that can do aggressive optimizations we're still talking about real-mode DOS here. Most of those optimizations aren't going to work. Regardless, you can target DOS just fine today. You'll need some code to bootstrap your program into protected/long mode and then your app has full freedom. You'll need to figure out the correct switches to pass to gcc to get it output a freestanding binary, and possibly a special linker script, etc. Freedom but, let's be honest, no real utility today. You can't access the network because you'll need to write the entire network stack from scratch. You'll need to write a driver for your network hardware. Can't touch video without writing a driver for your Nvidia hardware. Or sound card. I suspect what most people want from a "modern" DOS would be something like this: a very thin API layer that contains OpenGL (or Vulkan), audio, and networking capability. As well as drivers for common USB devices and something that can read/write FAT/exFAT. But once you add all of that you realize it's nowhere near as lightweight as old DOS was and your app now has a thousand more responsibilities that something like the Linux kernel is currently handling for you.

lmm 5y ago
> I suspect what most people want from a "modern" DOS would be something like this: a very thin API layer that contains OpenGL (or Vulkan), audio, and networking capability. As well as drivers for common USB devices and something that can read/write FAT/exFAT. But once you add all of that you realize it's nowhere near as lightweight as old DOS was and your app now has a thousand more responsibilities that something like the Linux kernel is currently handling for you. I think people may be looking for something like a unikernel framework. Something like Linux is a lot of overhead if all you want to do is run a single program on a machine (virtual or physical).

lmm 5y ago

> I suspect what most people want from a "modern" DOS would be something like this: a very thin API layer that contains OpenGL (or Vulkan), audio, and networking capability. As well as drivers for common USB devices and something that can read/write FAT/exFAT. But once you add all of that you realize it's nowhere near as lightweight as old DOS was and your app now has a thousand more responsibilities that something like the Linux kernel is currently handling for you. I think people may be looking for something like a unikernel framework. Something like Linux is a lot of overhead if all you want to do is run a single program on a machine (virtual or physical).