THE FREEDOS Ripcord BETA 7 Hot 02 ("SPEARS") DISTRIBUTION RELEASE NOTES Jim Hall Jeremy Davis 21 December 2001 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to the Ripcord Beta7 distribution! Problems/updates with the official Beta7 may be found on the FreeDOS web site at http://www.freedos.org/. Please read the errata. Updated versions of the the semi-official "Hot" releases may be found at http://www.fdos.org/ripcord/. For a list of programs available in this distribution see the file programs.txt, which includes information such as program name, license (copying information), and primary location to obtain program [also indicates what has been updated/changed]. In the meantime, some notes and things you need to watch out for: * Floppy access under the FreeDOS kernel is still a little slow. The installation will take longer than you may expect, and running programs from the Install Boot Floppy is slow. * The version of format included requires FreeDOS kernel 2024f or higher (or MS/PC/DR DOS). It now has bad sector checking, although it is only partially tested for hard drives. * Some programs (such as defrag) are available in the BASE install set, but are not installed by default as they do not currently provide enough functionality to be useful for general users. [Edit base.# and change from N to ? or Y to enable installation.] * The MINI and FULL distribution now use the same boot disk image. The choice of Mini or Full is presented at boot time. MINI consists of just the BASE install set and boot disk; whereas FULL includes the BASE install set, boot disk, and optionally the remaining install sets (EDIT, GUI, LANG, UTIL, and the source sets). {There is not currently a NETWORK install set.} * This distribution is provided with 3.5inch 1.44MB & 720KB floppy images and 5.25inch 1.2MB & 360KB floppy images. The 1.44MB image and disksets are the suggested ones to use, however to assist those without a 1.44MB floppy drive the other disk images are provided along with several of the disksets split up so they may fit on 360KB or larger disks. The 1.44MB disksets are available in disksets\ and the 360KB disksets are available in disksets.360\ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- FreeDOS is a trademark of Jim Hall. It was claimed as a trademark to prevent its possible abuse or misuse. The name FreeDOS may be used by the FreeDOS community to refer to programs that are part of the FreeDOS operating system, or to associate their programs with FreeDOS.