Hello everyone, I hope I came to the right place to ask my stupid question. I’m currently working in a company that stuck way way back in time. I’m talking some people are still working in DOS level back in time. There is some revamping of this in progres, but it’s going to be a long run.
The “IT department” (called computing department, lol) consist basically of 2 people, boss and me. Boss loves the old days, he’s “happily” using Win XP on his computer and hates everything newer than Win7, although half of everything he tries to do doesn’t work there anymore (and don’t even start with security of the OS). Anyway… that’s about the company background and what to expect.
During currently ongoing upgrades to get this company at least to 21st cwntury, there will be some sw licencing happening. I’m expecting like buying dozens of Office 2021 keys and some other standalone soft too. But there’s problem with managing those keys, as there is no precedence, no rules and everything’s going to be from the scratch almost. People are coming and going, PCs are dying (remember, there are still some DOS machines), hard drives replacing, etc. etc. Windows domain? Not in this company. Ever.
So, how do you keep track of what is installed and where? Thank you very much.
If you can get the organization to switch to Debian, you could do it all with free software and manage the whole thing with Ansible.
I mention this because if the org is running Windows software that old, then current generation FOSS software is going to be a breathe of fresh air, by comparison.
It might not work if someone with a C title has a specific magical Windows package they want.
But even then, I would manage one or two Windows PCs (for a couple of C suite execs) by hand, than a full organization full. And you would save the organization a boatload of money.
There are multitude of OS & software in running. Some people still use DOS, but most of those were already upgraded - to windows XP. These machines are currently being replaced with Win10 ones. But due to some specific old SW there still need to be some DOS machines running, at least for couple upcoming years. Linux is sadly not an option for typical office workers, again due to some software in use. There’s at least open source in places where possible with more (Firefox, Thunderbird, tightVNC, …) or less (LibreOffice) success.
I haven’t tried to run DOS on Win10, but I haven’t been able to get my old DOS programs to run on anything Windows XP or newer, myself. XP at least had some compatibility options to try. I don’t think I’ve seen those options in Win7 or newer.
It will vary by program, but I’ve needed DosBox on Windows, as well as on Linux, for anything DOS based that I have run anytime recently.
Can you run the DOS software under DOSBox?
I haven’t tried, but given how quirky it is (in house development decades ago with patches and hotfixes stuck to it over years) I highly doubt it would work. The main problem is that there’s no will to use Linux in office environment…
We’re at least running it on POS machines - about 150 openSUSE installs - where there’s nothing fancy needed.
DOSBox runs on both Linux and Windows (and probably Mac too?); I was suggesting it since you might be able to replace the dying DOS computers with a modern system and just launch the legacy system as an application under it. (You might be able to do the same with a VM as well, but DOSBox came to mind first and may be easier to setup and distribute.)
Just a thought. If it’s not useful, feel free to disregard.
Hell, DOS is open source now. Run it in a Hyper-V on Windows 10.