Can Protos run (or plan to run in the future) DOS applications made for real mode DOS?
Well, there
has to be some kind of real mode inside of it for it to be able to run protected mode (note that most protected mode DOS apps have a real mode stub -- an extender -- at the beginning of them).
The answer to your question is a little bit tricky, however. Real mode has some kinks, and protected mode has some other kinks, so that predicting whether a program can be run is a little difficult. It all really depends on the program in question.
Also, there is little actual difference between these two modes. The only real difference lies in interrupt handling and memory management. Note that CPU instructions are the same in both modes.
If we are going to implement a subsystem, however, there is no choice: real mode and protected mode must be implemented.
Just like you, I'm still mostly in study phase. I'm studying the code hard, however, and you gotta admit, 100 megs of code is a LOT of code.
Bullshit. VMWare is an address translating virtualizer, and if the OS inside VMWare crashes, does VMWare crash? No. So if an application inside Ros-NTVDM crashes, will ReactOS crash? No.
That's not
entirely correct. See, there are faults in every system. Even in an emulator, there exist cases where a cleverly written peice of code can bring the emulator down. What differs is the level of security. It appears (at first glance, though deeper study may prove it to be wrong) that emulators suffer less from these kinds of vulnerabilities than virtualizers or subsystems do.
Don't forget that emulators and virtualizers, no matter how complete, are still only lowly application-level programs, whereas a subsystem is basically part of the OS. Therefore --> collapsed subsystem=collapsed OS.
Your mileage may vary. It all depends on the way the program is written. A decent program would not give blue screens every five seconds.
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we shall reinvent the wheel until it turns properly.