FAQ

Q: I've heard something about Gene Buckle. What/Who's that? A: Gene's a real live human being. He is more or less running the effort to get the sources into a releasable format, and is the main liason between Caldera and the DJGPP crew. Q: What's the EDC? A: European Development Center. That's where all the OpenDOS work is being done. It's in England. Q: And GEM is...? A: GEM is a graphical user interface. It stands for Graphical Environment Manager. It isn't quite as flashy as the Windows 95 shell, but it certainly gets the job done. Q: What's DJGPP? A: DJGPP is a freely available 32-bit development system based on the GNU tools Q: What's WINE? A: A Windows Emulator for X running on Intel platforms. Written by the Internet Community. Q: Isn't that what WABI is? A: Almost. WABI is a Windows Emulator for X that runs on any platform, written by Sun Microsystems. Q: What's an IFS? A: In this context, it's an Installable Files System - a file system module that can be installed after the system boots. For example, NWCDEX is an IFS, as would be any NFS software. In other contexts, it's an Iterated Function System. Q: What's "loading high"? A: A trick used to free up more DOS memory by moving drivers and parts of the system into other memory areas. Q: What's FAT32? A: FAT12, FAT16, an FAT32 are all cluster-based disk layouts. FAT12 is usually used on floppies and FAT16 on hard drives (more clusters). FAT32 is new, and supports more (and thus smaller) clusters, making disk storage more efficient. Q: What's XFree86? A: An X11 server that's available in source format. Runs on many platforms. Q: Is there an IRC channel for discussing OpenDOS? A: I hoped you'd ask that. *opendos on EFNet. Q: I'm having trouble finding it A: You probably have an old page. Q: I've found it but it never downloads completely A: This is due to the way that Caldera's web server is set up - it times out. If you have access to a high-speed network at your ISP or work, download it there and then transfer it over your modem. Until Caldera modifies their license, no mirrors can be set up. Send email to geneb@web.wa.net if you really need it to find out what the current best way to get it. Q: I found the right page and downloaded it... but IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM are missing!!! A: Please re-download the binaries. They aren't really missing. Honest. Q: Is there any documentation available? A: Run the program dosbook that comes with OpenDOS. Q: What's FaX? A: FaX - yes, the name's a ripoff of TeX - is the FAQ formatter created especially for this FAQ, but is showing signs of usefulness for FAQs in general, so I'll be making a nice public release sometime. Anyone who's interested should mail alaric@abwillms.demon.co.uk. Q: I can't find what I need in dosbook or this FAQ. it may also have information still useful to OpenDOS. Then again, you could just ask away on the mailing list or IRC channel. Q: Did you say "mailing list"? A: Yes, listserv@delorie.com handles all subscriptions for the three OpenDOS mailing lists - opendos@delorie.com opendos-support@delorie.com and opendos-developer@delorie.com - all at delorie.com. Some discussion happens on the DJGPP mailing lists as well. The mailing list is archived at DJ's page. See the introduction. Also, take a look Q: Is there a newsgroup? A: Not yet. A few people have shown interest, but there probably will be eventually. Compatability - does OpenDOS support: Q: 4DOS? A: Yes. Q: Boot managers? A: Yes. The OS files are IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM if you need to know. Current advice (as always) is to back up your existing stuff before trying anything; this also applies to OpenDOS. One that has been mentioned is GRUB Also note that OpenDOS currently needs to be installed in the primary partition of the first hard disk to work. See using GRUB for more information. Q: Booting from the second hard drive? A: Nope. However, once the sources are released, check out the IBMBIO.COM