Subj : Re: BBS platforms
To   : Nightfox
From : esc
Date : Tue Sep 13 2022 11:21 pm

 Ni> For sysops, I'm just curious what platforms & operating system you run
 Ni> your BBS in?

I use linux - Ubuntu Server, to be exact. The reason I use Ubuntu Server is that I like the Debian 'apt' construct, upgrades, systemd (gasp!), etc., but I prefer the frequency at which Ubuntu is updated.

I run this all in a DigitalOcean VM. Additionally, I run another VM with 32 bit Windows 7, and use that to host MajorBBS, TBBS, and GameSRV.

The Win7 box is /barely/ able to connect to the internet, really the only things that can reach it are my RDP connection and my other BBS :)

 Ni> the Linux host OS and then update my DOS door configurations to make
 Ni> sure they'd run with DOSEMU in Linux.  I did have a couple of

DOSEMU works great, but not perfectly. There are some games, typically ones with a "roguelike" aspect to them like LORD2 and LORE, which for some reason don't work well for me in DigitalOcean VMs on DOSEMU. I can't reproduce the issue locally in DOSEMU but at the end of the day I simply decided to use the Win7 VM instead.

The issues this creates, I'm sure you can imagine, is now I have to maintain two systems and ensure they are up, and if I ever decide to do any sort of InterBBS gaming, it will be a bit of a struggle...but on the positive side, my BBS hosting VM doesn't use any real CPU running games. Most of them are pretty lightweight but for some reason LORD versions prior to 4.0 really peg the CPU. *shrug*

 Ni> TradeWars 2002 initially wasn't running in Linux (DOSEMU 1.x was the
 Ni> default supported by Synchronet), but this past weekend I was able to
 Ni> get DOSEMU2 working with Synchronet, and now TradeWars 2002 is able to
 Ni> run again.

Yep, this was super exciting for me with DOSEMU2.

Interestingly, I was also able to get TWGS to work with VNC on a headless VM. Now it runs on Win7, but at the time I was proud of myself, hehe.

 Ni> I think it's pretty cool what you can do these days with Linux, a free
 Ni> OS, and the free software available for it.

Indeed. I use linux as my daily driver as well, and one of my work computers is a linux box. I recently ditched Windows 11 and aside from some game compatibility am happy with my decision.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/07/11 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: m O N T E R E Y b B S . c O M (21:4/173)

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