Share opinions re best MS-DOS Utilities

[DrV]

But... but... UNIX is so great! It even has separate archiving and compression utilites, so you can make a tarball! Whee!

Of course, my favorite DOS utility would be DOSEmu. It doesn't run on dos, but it runs DOS, so I hope that counts.

[oracle]

I'm running QBasic under DOSEMU in my linux partition. It can't set UGL screen modes and won't run full screen, but is adequate for my work on StatLib.

My favourite DOS command? FDISK (has anyone heard of this?)

[Glenn]

.

[oracle]

Lotsa people glenn. Though you've been around for a while, so I'd expect you to know about it.

[DrV]

Of course not as many people know of fdisk /mbr 8)

[Hexadecimal Disaster]

winrar can split files into 1.44mb sizes, along with its superior compression abilities ^_^

They're talking about MS-DOS utilities and you mention WinRAR. Funny thing, considering that the RAR archiver has a command line version for "pure" MS-DOS. Oh, and up to version 2.50 (sadly) RAR also featured a nifty GUI a-la XTREE. Very nice proggie, I can tell ya. Far better than PKZIP in every aspect, too.

[oracle]

That one saved my butt when installing Windows in a partition with Linux on the other...

[Moneo]

FDISK is a great program, but very dangerous in the hands of a novice. Actually, I don't consider it as an MS-DOS standalone utility, because it is an integral part of MS-DOS, just like EDIT.

PKZIP:
Throughout this thread, other similar, faster, better utilities have been mentioned. I consider that the use of compacted files is extremely critical for file transmission, backups, etc. I prefer to always use PKZIP because I know it's the defacto standard for more than 10 years. When I receive a file that was compacted with WinZip, I know that I can decompress it with PKUNZIP, and vice versa. Why tamper with the unknown? There's a saying in Spanish: "Mejor lo malo conocido, que lo bueno por conocer." Roughly translated it means: "That which is known, yet bad, is better than that which is not known, yet good."

The same thinking applies to using QuickBasic 4.5. I personally tried 5.0, 6.0,, and 7.x, but went back, and am still using, 4.5 because I understand it, recognize it's shortcomings, and feel very comfortable with it.
*****

[Glenn]

You should avoid it because it causes files to disappear from your hard disk. (Actual "advice" from a DOS "help column" in a magazine.)

[oracle]

You should avoid it because it causes files to disappear from your hard disk. (Actual "advice" from a DOS "help column" in a magazine.)

[sarcasm]Well... I never would have guessed...[/sarcasm]