FreeDOS vs. DOSBOX: Which is better for legacy software use?

[RobertX]

What was your Internet connection? ISDN? 56K?

[rezwaki]

Neither, we first connected to the Internet back in 2008 and it was unlimited bandwidth internet connection pretty much like today, except the speed was super slow, to download a movie (I'm talking about ~1 gb size) I had to leave the PC on overnight. Prior to that no Internet at home. Then one of my friends got an upgrade to 100mbps, so I did the same even though we had different ISPs, the price was not that big compared to the old connection anyway, they off'd some because we were using their services for a while. I'm still sitting on that 100mbps even though occasionally it can jump up to 120-130 mbps, it has fluctuations and it might be 90mbps too but not lower than that

PS the old connection we had they didn't present us with any router so we had connection on just one PC out of two + it was dynamic IP, now we have four PCs and thanks to the router all are connected + wifi & static IP. They first gave us the router when we upgraded to 100mbps for free (it was listed under services column as Rented and the price was zero) then that router broke and I bought another one which was a NetGear still using it to this day, works flawlessly. The ISP doesn't know the old router is broken

[RobertX]

Oh it was 2008! In that case, understandable.

I am still stuck on 6Mbps, no joke.

Life fucking sucks.

[rezwaki]

Oh you can't upgrade? Do you have other ISPs who have 100mbps connection or it's just too expensive?

[RobertX]

Oh, I can move, but my mother is too stubborn.

She doesn't download as much as I do.

Most of the time, I borrow DVDs from the library and rip them that way. That practice mitigates the pain associated with collecting media by a lot.

[rezwaki]

Well glad that works for you, after all 6mbps isn't the worst on Earth, I heard folks in Iran get about 300-600 kbps /anything below 1mbps

[RobertX]

Well, I was digressing too much.

Back to topic: have you guys tried certain forks of DOSBox? And does FreeDOS have forks as well?

[rezwaki]

I've never tried any DOS emulator except for DOSBox which I tried just a couple times years ago I think to run Shadow Warrior/Blood or stuff like that

[Fant0men]

Well, I was digressing too much.

Back to topic: have you guys tried certain forks of DOSBox? And does FreeDOS have forks as well?

As already mentioned, I have apparently been running the DOSBox Staging fork for a couple of years.

Also, I found this:
https://86box.net/

I can't remember if I linked it before. I do know we've talked about PCEm. This seems to be something similar. Just thought maybe you'd want to know it exists.

Not sure if there's forks of FreeDOS. I get the feeling DOS as an OS is pretty well understood these days, and there probably doesn't need to be forks of FreeDOS. I think the OS is probably simple enough for it to be possible to eliminate most, if not all, bugs, and implement every feature a DOS user would need. While DOS was a thing, there were so many different versions by different companies. I assume the developers of FreeDOS have explored the depths of DOS pretty thoroughly.

[RobertX]

I was referring along the lines of DOSBOX-X and ones other than DOSBOXD-Staging.

There are still a lot of them brewing up.