GRUB; the fat worm.

[Warrior]

Well that useless thing called Dos that is 20 years old, is more usefull than any hobby OS, so far made, so what does that say about how far hobby OS dev has come.
Maybe if more OS dev's used the "KISS" principle, this would not be the case.

Plain and simple: Dos has limitations. Same reason people moved on then is the same reason djgpp is bad now. Limitations which lead to bad workarounds. People suggest a cross compiler so everyone is on the same playing field.

I'd like to keep it simple not severely handicapped if I were to write something like DOS.

[Dex4u]

You just do not get it, the point i am making, is that you can not even come close to making a OS as good as Dos, never mind passing it.

I will aim to equal Dos (in a modern way and this does not mean 16bit realmode OS) before, i can even think about passing.

[Kemp]

So what you're saying is we shouldn't use more modern and better tools to work with until we can create better ones ourselves? That just makes no sense to me.

Note that we were saying don't use DJGPP because it isn't as good as newer tools we have available, that makes perfect logical sense. Saying we should all use it because it runs under an old OS that we haven't managed to write ourselves doesn't make sense.

------

If I may take us back to the reason for this thread... I don't use Grub personally, but that's because I'm using my OS as a learning exercise and the more I do myself the more I learn about how the system works. My OS isn't meant to ever be used, but it's teaching me a hell of a lot about the inner workings (and non-workings) of PCs.

[Solar]

@ Dex4U:

Dude, you're sure riding the edge here. Tone it down or your posts will get moderated, OK?

The reason so many people ask about DJGPP is that it is recommended in Bran's OS tutorial on Bona Fide, the other excellent site about OS development.

And your argument contra C / DOS / DJGPP is all over the place. As a starting point, I recommend reading Joel's the perils of JavaSchools as far as the "inferiority" of C is concerned.

And once again, tone it down and stop trying to "educate" people who are most likely your superior both in age and experience. Especially unasked-for and in that snotty behaviour of yours.

[dh]

Dex4u, You are my HERO. You made a 16 OS! WOW! I looked the screenshots on youre webpage.. . . AWSOME! I WISH I could print-scr paste it in mspaint and then touch it up! WHOOOA! You are going to be the next Bill Gates.. OMG. (etc. etc.)

"Dex4u is a 32bit pmode operating system, written entirely in assembly language. It's based on a modern day dos, as in it's single tasking, runs in ring0, and lets programmers have direct access to the hardware, but unlike dos, you can access up to 4GB of memory. But do not think of "Dex4u" as a old fashioned os, it is what dos would of been, if M$ had not killed it off, It is also the same layout as the Xbox, which can not be called old fashoin.

Firstly, quit the scarcasm! It only ignites anger.

gawd knows who@Dex: I'm starting to think you are getting a tad full of yourself, having your hobby os on a list with linux and other hot-shots (here for the curious).

To be honnest, I don't give to shakes of a rat's @$$! The spoon micro-kernel beats the effin crap out of dos, as does Clicker32. Clicker32 isn't EVEN DONE! WHY? I'll sure tell you! DOS is ancient technology. Is it still usefull? YES.

Now for DJGPP or whatever the gawdamn thing is called. If it was still under active devlopment, people would most likely use it. What's that? Still under development? Yes I've read this page about porting to XP and such, but the DOS version you are talking about is no longer supported officially!

One more thing @dex. If you can write such a nice bootloader: DO IT. I sure will use it if it's all you say!

I could go on and on about you dex, but I choose not to. Why? I don't want to get permenantly banned! Also, you insight is usually usefull, and you're an enemy I don't want. As for the rest of you trouble-makers (the saints may disregard): KNOCK IT OFF!

Cheers, DH. >:(

@pype: If you find something about Clicker32 offensive (i don't see anything myself), tell me so I can remove it!

<pype> took the liberty to moderate the terms and wipe the now irrelevant asm-vs-the-world troll out of it</pype>

[dh]

that was a link from one of your people's website. jes0 iirc.

Now that ALL OF THAT is done, i want to be rid of the subject!

To all: im not sorry for what I wrote, and I have no qualms about argueing privatly.

@DEX: ...... .... You can make it drink if it's thirsty ;D, or if you push it's snout into the water to impair drinking. I have nothing against 100% asm stuff, nor dos, nor anything else. I am quite pleased you can find room for smilies in your post . Now I have to wait to be banned for the ronchier things...

no more, im going to bed before i have a heart attack or something

[Solar]

@mods: Please close/delete this thread or something! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY KEYBOARD!

I hope Dex4U got the message from my posting this morning, and that closing the thread is not necessary. He's surely flagged in my mind for some time to come.

[distantvoices]

Whoa, what a thread.

@Dex4u: You are sure you read your posts ere clicking submit? Na, honestly, take care of what you utter, ok? This 'd give us all here the most bang for the buck I reckon.

@topic: I think that grub in it's present state is quite useful. I also think that they shold give it more of a touch up instead of fully concentrating on this grub2 thing. Have they made a market research? It wuld be quite nice to know: what do people think about our intentions? (Not as if some ppl in the FOSS-scene ever cared about this, but that's another story)

@Solar: Good that you 've closed that other thread. I might have followed the temptation to give that lad some hearty reprimand instead of cutting him some slack. Well. The weather 'd be for such a thing: nasty, wet & cold.

[Solar]

I think that grub in it's present state is quite useful. I also think that they shold give it more of a touch up instead of fully concentrating on this grub2 thing.

Unfortunately they instead decided to completely pull the plug on GRUB "legacy" before it made it to 1.0. "Good enough" was their verdict, and "who cares whether it's pre-1.0". Which doesn't give me a good feeling about GRUB 2.

Have they made a market research?

ROTLBTCSTC...

As far as I understood, they basically saw that PUPA (Japanese people) was going to brush up GRUB to be cleaner and supporting locales, and dropped work on the "legacy" code to keep control over the imminent fork.

The upside of OSS, so to speak.

[distantvoices]

*rofl*

That's a good one. I reckon they put something together, work on it til version 0.99, then they see something else and say whoa, that's better, let's work on this instead.

[Pype.Clicker]

Well, i'd say GRUB is pretty much the example of that ancient "unix philosophy": do one thing, do it well. Grub do one thing (loading any other OS) -- as far as "one thing" could be.

Is it full of things Clicker don't need ? yeah! quite certainly ... yet it's also full of things i like to have below my hand when a linux machine is no longer working properly.

Am i going to use bootprog or whatever else instead ? quite frankly, no. For simple reasons: none of those other bootloaders came with the support GRUB has. I mean it runs correctly on more machines i could ever dream of. It is pre-installed at many place so i do not need to convince people to use YetAnotherBootLoader on their system.

Am i going to use DOS instead ? well, i've been (including stuff like Loadlin.exe), and i no longer will. And a good reason for this is the fact that in order to have SOS.EXE built, you needed some tools to produce .EXE files that weren't freely available (no longer true, but still), and that in order to have SOS.EXE running, you needed a "clean" DOS running.

The very reason why i have abandonned DOS is the repeated request from people at MT to have Clicker running in some emulator, and i should admit that it resurected Clicker development too...

[dh]

sorry I flipped my lid, but I just DON'T like nonsense on topics that have (even a small bit) conversation that is worth reading.

GRUB legacy is one of the best bootloaders around (or so I believe). I ran tests on various Homebrews with it last year. The fact that they dropped GRUB at 0.99 is very strange. They never even finished putting in the multiboot specs! (i stand corrected, the VESA extensions to Multiboot have been put in (wether or not they function is another question I will hopefully be able to answer on next reboot ). I _still_ think homebrew is the way to go. You get total control, and plus, you _can_ make it multiboot too. Then you get the best of all worlds .

Cheers, DH.