some bees nest stirring, was just how much can you do with?

[Tony Baechler]

OK, a couple of quick thoughts, based on my own experience.  Yes, you can 
run Lynx, etc from DOS.  However, it's much, much slower and requires messin 
around with packet drivers and dial-up networking.  Linux has that built-in 
automatically and almost always just works.  I never got Lynx to run in 
plain DOS because I couldn't find a packet driver and TCP/IP software for my 
network card, which is one of the big reasons why I switched to Windows 98 
and the command prompt.  The second issue is that, due to DOS memory 
limitations, the ports will have a lot less features unless they use djgpp 
and a DOS extender to get around the 640 KB limit.  That's called protected 
mode and again, Linux doesn't have that limitation.  Finally, Lynx at least 
used direct screen writes, so Vocal-Eyes didn't automatically read the 
screen without a set file.  In Linux and Cygwin, it was able to read fine on 
its own because it used BIOS writes.  Lynx in Linux is literally at least 
twice as fast as DOS as I'm sure you've seen from Shellworld.

On 3/4/2013 11:03 AM, Karen Lewellen wrote:
> Still if elinks and mplayer exist ported for DOS, why go through the extreme
> mayhem of finding someone local enough to learn speakup and ora and so forth
> to teach me in the first place?