``Just curious: what does that DOS box actually do, i.e. what internet apps are you using on it and why?
It's pretty plain really. First, regarding hacking, there are no servers running. Although there are crude http and ftp servers available, I see no reason for doing it on that machine since Linux or BSD does it really well almost out of the box. Also, it's the machine I write on so it makes a good "client terminal" for everything else.
Also, like you, I find that a bigger OS (in my case Kubuntu) is better for browsing, audio, and video. Lynx however, works well in DOS and is sometimes the best choice, such as for the local remote weather station.
The
internet apps that I get a lot of use out of are FTP, WGET, PING, TRACEROUTE, TELNET, SSH, LYNX, and DNS LOOKUP. There are others set up like HTGET, IRC, and DHCP, but I don't normally use them. I should also say that POP3 is available from a small mail transport agent. I have fallen into the bad habit of doing e-mail on-line and I'm not currently doing it on this machine but have done so much in past. I'm saying that just so someone else will know that it is very practical on DOS.
As to
why, I find that DOS offers the kind of text editing that I prefer. I have a nice spell checker and lots of utilities, from the likes of WC, and GREP to TIDY, and lexical or other lookups. I also have a nice single keystroke way of saving and showing the last 8 pages regardless of what screen I'm on. There is a nice TSR pupup text screen which is handy for notes on the fly and with my cut and paste TSR. I have a lot of trouble using a mouse (partly because the concept irritates me) and I have a different visual relationship with the physical world than most normal people. Therefore DOS is good for me. There is also the thing about writing little batch files to do what I normally do. An example is the BBSs that I normally call are invoked by short names. Another example is that an automatic FTP connection to some specific directories on my main Linux box and several "paid for" servers, is a single short word. The same goes for many other things on this machine. Yes all that can be done in Linux, and BSD, but those OSs are a challenge for me to learn and everything I want to do is so simple in DOS. In short I use mostly FTP and Telnet on DOS because it connects my OS of choice with the rest of the world, including my other computers.
