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http://www.osfree.org/

osFree (http://www.osfree.org/) was having a god moment some years ago, but sadly we lack developers to continue the project.

What I think that it will be interesting is trying to clone the close source components that runs on top of OS/2 Warp like WPS, SOM and PM.
- Presentation Manager - http://www.osfree.org/
- SOM - https://sourceforge.net/projec...
- WPS - XWorkplace and other OSS WPS classes

I think we should focus first in only one component that can run over OS/2 Warp 4.5x or eCS to later continue and gain momentum for the rest.

Look up http://www.osfree.org/ Such a project is already under development.

All that is correct. That said, the one thing I find interesting about it is the Quark microkernel, and the fact that this OS is targeted towards non-x86 platforms. The Quark microkernel is a variation of the L4 microkernel, and the Abox that sits on top of it is an AmigaOS sandbox that sits on it. If this works, other subsystems can be tried out on this as well.

An FOSS project similar to this, called osFree is also out there, and it aims at doing the same thing. The sandboxes in osFree are called personalities, and they have goals for a Presentation Manager (i.e. OS/2) personality, a win16 and win32 personality, and hopefully at some point a win64 personality. This sounds similar to IBM's erstwhile Workplace OS that they tried doing for PPC, but abandoned. Except that in that case, the kernel being used was Mach 3.0, which was huge & unwieldy, although w/ today's CPU firepower, it would probably fly. As far as the windows sandboxes go, a major difference b/w them and ReactOS is that they are not aiming for binary compatibility w/ existing Windows drivers.

I don't think these projects have any use as far as x86 PCs or laptops go. However, for old RISC workstations that still works, but no longer has original companies like SGI or DEC supporting it, things like MorphOS and osFree are pretty nifty - since these microkernels (L4 at least) have been ported to various architectures, they too can have something like OS/2 or Windows like OSs on them, and not be limited to just Unixes, such as BSD or Linux.

Unfortunately, I never owned a PC during the time that OS/2 was around, and so never got to experience what it was. But most of the people who ever used it liked it. Just hearing about some of the concepts - dragging a file to a printer icon in order to print - blew me away. An OS that would have been the offspring of OS/2 and NEXTSTEP would have been just purrrfekt!

In college, I learnt about microprocessor design on a PPC 601 - the first PPC to come out after IBM did a derivative design of it along w/ Motorola (now Freescale). Knowing that OS/2 was going to have an uphill battle outside IBM (heck, even Amber didn't offer the OS), I was rooting for OS/2-PPC, which was known as Workplace OS. Unfortunately, as it turned out, Mach 3 turned out to be a horrible choice for a kernel (and Hurd pretty much made the same mistake in going w/ it) and finally, IBM canned it. That was the real death knell of OS/2, and w/ it died any real hopes of the PPC getting popular outside Apple (as far as computers go - I'm not thinking about consoles or other boxes)

Incidentally, today, there is a project called OSFree, which is similar in concept to Workplace OS, except that it uses the more recent L4 micro-kernel as its underpinning. The concept here is good - on top of the micro-kernel, they plan to use different 'personalities', such as Presentation Manager, Win32, DOS and even Linux (there already exists an L4Linux, so they may not do much more on that one), as well as a Neutral personality, which would provide the services that the other personalities require. The advantage here is that the portability of the L4 has already been demonstrated, since after an initial design w/ some assembly code, it was found that replacing assembly code w/ C didn't have any performance impact.

I know that at this point in the game, computers based on anything other than x64 or ARM are pretty much non-starters, but it would be fantastic if such a project actually came to fruition. That would be a good step towards portable computing, while giving just about any architecture the ability to have an environment like OS/2. Hopefully, all the major FOSS software will be ported there, and that platform would then have a chance of being viable. I think that b/w OSFree and ReactOS, there should be enough opportunity for OSs that decide to take advantage of the end of support for XP. Maybe a laptop based on a MIPS or PPC can have a go at it

The thing I heard is that Amiga's scripting language REXX was awesome, and it later moved to OS/2.

I believe it was the other direction -- IBM created REXX and deployed it on OS/2 (and possibly some other places), and somebody ported it to Amiga. This is why the Amiga guys call it AREXX; the port was "Amiga REXX".

Thanks for correcting me here

Which brings to mind an idea. How many of you have heard of OSFree? It's an FOSS version of OS/w, where they take the L4 microkernel, put the Presentation Manager personality on top of it, so that they have an OS/2 that is lightweight, but preserves all the advantages that OS/2 had. Since it's on a widely ported microkernel, this OS/2 would also be portable to any CPU architecture that L4 exists on, not just x86. And it wouldn't be a nightmare like IBM's Workplace OS attempt was.

The ideas sound similar to Workplace OS. What makes you assume that a tiny OSS project will succeed where IBM's funded project failed?

And frankly, why OS/2? What's the point? I'm not sure Presentation Manager had any real advantages which would still hold up today.

It's not quite the same. Workplace OS was a completely new product, not a port of OS/2. It borrowed certain sections of code from both the existing OS/2 and AIX products while using an entirely new microkernel code base and adding major features including a system registry and a new driver model. However, a project was launched internally to evaluate the looming competitive situation with Microsoft Windows 95, the major code quality issues in the existing OS/2 product (resulting in over 20 service packs, each requiring more diskettes than the original installation), and the ineffective and heavily matrixed development organization in Boca Raton and Austin. That study revealed untenable weaknesses across the board in IBM and a decision was made to scrap the project.

In this case, the microkernel is a second generation L4 already ported to different platforms, and it would have different personalities on it that one can choose. The scope seems far less - just have Presentation Manager ported on L4. The OS also has a Neutral personality, which is the real OS API. It is a set of servers for various services. All other personalities need to work via this personality. The device driver model will presumably be available here, and from it, all personalities can access it.

As for why Presentation Manager, the project team had this to say:

OS/2 has one of the most stable, robust and high-performance kernels. Written in assembly language, it is highly-optimized and uses all i386 architecture features very extensively. It's modular design allows to easy replace components with more featured/less resource-eating/cut off GUI, or customize system to fit user preferences. It is highly configurable. We like its compact and clean API, it's easy to use and intuitive powerful true object-oriented user interface. It's uses one of the best general purpose scripting languages named REXX as operating system scripting service with API available to any application. OS/2 was advertised by IBM as “DOS better than DOS and Windows better than Windows”. It is true – it's VDM was the best ever existing. And not only DOS/Windows. It had Java and XFree86 support very powerful too. So, we started loving OS/2 as powerful integration platforms on top of single desktop. It has been used by marginals and non-conformists for years and always had its own way. We want to continue following this way :) We can sleep peacefully knowing that it is not popular between hackers and virus writers, they like mainstream.. But we can't stay this way – starting at De

The thing I heard is that Amiga's scripting language REXX was awesome, and it later moved to OS/2.

I believe it was the other direction -- IBM created REXX and deployed it on OS/2 (and possibly some other places), and somebody ported it to Amiga. This is why the Amiga guys call it AREXX; the port was "Amiga REXX".

Thanks for correcting me here

Which brings to mind an idea. How many of you have heard of OSFree? It's an FOSS version of OS/w, where they take the L4 microkernel, put the Presentation Manager personality on top of it, so that they have an OS/2 that is lightweight, but preserves all the advantages that OS/2 had. Since it's on a widely ported microkernel, this OS/2 would also be portable to any CPU architecture that L4 exists on, not just x86. And it wouldn't be a nightmare like IBM's Workplace OS attempt was.

The ideas sound similar to Workplace OS. What makes you assume that a tiny OSS project will succeed where IBM's funded project failed?

And frankly, why OS/2? What's the point? I'm not sure Presentation Manager had any real advantages which would still hold up today.

It's not quite the same. Workplace OS was a completely new product, not a port of OS/2. It borrowed certain sections of code from both the existing OS/2 and AIX products while using an entirely new microkernel code base and adding major features including a system registry and a new driver model. However, a project was launched internally to evaluate the looming competitive situation with Microsoft Windows 95, the major code quality issues in the existing OS/2 product (resulting in over 20 service packs, each requiring more diskettes than the original installation), and the ineffective and heavily matrixed development organization in Boca Raton and Austin. That study revealed untenable weaknesses across the board in IBM and a decision was made to scrap the project.

In this case, the microkernel is a second generation L4 already ported to different platforms, and it would have different personalities on it that one can choose. The scope seems far less - just have Presentation Manager ported on L4. The OS also has a Neutral personality, which is the real OS API. It is a set of servers for various services. All other personalities need to work via this personality. The device driver model will presumably be available here, and from it, all personalities can access it.

As for why Presentation Manager, the project team had this to say:

OS/2 has one of the most stable, robust and high-performance kernels. Written in assembly language, it is highly-optimized and uses all i386 architecture features very extensively. It's modular design allows to easy replace components with more featured/less resource-eating/cut off GUI, or customize system to fit user preferences. It is highly configurable. We like its compact and clean API, it's easy to use and intuitive powerful true object-oriented user interface. It's uses one of the best general purpose scripting languages named REXX as operating system scripting service with API available to any application. OS/2 was advertised by IBM as “DOS better than DOS and Windows better than Windows”. It is true – it's VDM was the best ever existing. And not only DOS/Windows. It had Java and XFree86 support very powerful too. So, we started loving OS/2 as powerful integration platforms on top of single desktop. It has been used by marginals and non-conformists for years and always had its own way. We want to continue following this way :) We can sleep peacefully knowing that it is not popular between hackers and virus writers, they like mainstream.. But we can't stay this way – starting at De

The thing I heard is that Amiga's scripting language REXX was awesome, and it later moved to OS/2.

I believe it was the other direction -- IBM created REXX and deployed it on OS/2 (and possibly some other places), and somebody ported it to Amiga. This is why the Amiga guys call it AREXX; the port was "Amiga REXX".

Thanks for correcting me here

Which brings to mind an idea. How many of you have heard of OSFree? It's an FOSS version of OS/w, where they take the L4 microkernel, put the Presentation Manager personality on top of it, so that they have an OS/2 that is lightweight, but preserves all the advantages that OS/2 had. Since it's on a widely ported microkernel, this OS/2 would also be portable to any CPU architecture that L4 exists on, not just x86. And it wouldn't be a nightmare like IBM's Workplace OS attempt was.

The ideas sound similar to Workplace OS. What makes you assume that a tiny OSS project will succeed where IBM's funded project failed?

And frankly, why OS/2? What's the point? I'm not sure Presentation Manager had any real advantages which would still hold up today.

It's not quite the same. Workplace OS was a completely new product, not a port of OS/2. It borrowed certain sections of code from both the existing OS/2 and AIX products while using an entirely new microkernel code base and adding major features including a system registry and a new driver model. However, a project was launched internally to evaluate the looming competitive situation with Microsoft Windows 95, the major code quality issues in the existing OS/2 product (resulting in over 20 service packs, each requiring more diskettes than the original installation), and the ineffective and heavily matrixed development organization in Boca Raton and Austin. That study revealed untenable weaknesses across the board in IBM and a decision was made to scrap the project.

In this case, the microkernel is a second generation L4 already ported to different platforms, and it would have different personalities on it that one can choose. The scope seems far less - just have Presentation Manager ported on L4. The OS also has a Neutral personality, which is the real OS API. It is a set of servers for various services. All other personalities need to work via this personality. The device driver model will presumably be available here, and from it, all personalities can access it.

As for why Presentation Manager, the project team had this to say:

OS/2 has one of the most stable, robust and high-performance kernels. Written in assembly language, it is highly-optimized and uses all i386 architecture features very extensively. It's modular design allows to easy replace components with more featured/less resource-eating/cut off GUI, or customize system to fit user preferences. It is highly configurable. We like its compact and clean API, it's easy to use and intuitive powerful true object-oriented user interface. It's uses one of the best general purpose scripting languages named REXX as operating system scripting service with API available to any application. OS/2 was advertised by IBM as “DOS better than DOS and Windows better than Windows”. It is true – it's VDM was the best ever existing. And not only DOS/Windows. It had Java and XFree86 support very powerful too. So, we started loving OS/2 as powerful integration platforms on top of single desktop. It has been used by marginals and non-conformists for years and always had its own way. We want to continue following this way :) We can sleep peacefully knowing that it is not popular between hackers and virus writers, they like mainstream.. But we can't stay this way – starting at De

The thing I heard is that Amiga's scripting language REXX was awesome, and it later moved to OS/2.

I believe it was the other direction -- IBM created REXX and deployed it on OS/2 (and possibly some other places), and somebody ported it to Amiga. This is why the Amiga guys call it AREXX; the port was "Amiga REXX".

Which brings to mind an idea. How many of you have heard of OSFree? It's an FOSS version of OS/w, where they take the L4 microkernel, put the Presentation Manager personality on top of it, so that they have an OS/2 that is lightweight, but preserves all the advantages that OS/2 had. Since it's on a widely ported microkernel, this OS/2 would also be portable to any CPU architecture that L4 exists on, not just x86. And it wouldn't be a nightmare like IBM's Workplace OS attempt was.

The ideas sound similar to Workplace OS. What makes you assume that a tiny OSS project will succeed where IBM's funded project failed?

And frankly, why OS/2? What's the point? I'm not sure Presentation Manager had any real advantages which would still hold up today.

Similarly, the Hyperion people could do something similar - take a microkernel, maybe L4, and then port the Amiga UI to it as a personality (just like Presentation Manager in the above example).

Amiga was microkernel-ish, but don't let that fool you into thinking it's simple to jack it up and slide in L4. The big one is that AOS has zero memory protection, and lots of the AOS APIs were designed to take advantage of it to enhance system performance. For example, processes end up swapping pointers to linked lists via the GUI APIs, and subsequently walk through said data structures without going through any APIs at all. This means you can't hide the ugliness by changing the OS to imitate the old behavior at the API interface. There are also explicitly globally shared data structures. To modernize this kind of stuff, it would be necessary to make API changes which would completely break old applications.

What you'd get in the end is a new OS which can't run any classic Amiga programs natively (*). IMO this would be a bit pointless because there isn't any compelling reason to resurrect & modernize classic Amiga APIs... even aside from the issues outlined above they're looking more than a little dated these days.

* - native in the API sense, not the instruction set. It's usually much easier to port to a new CPU holding the APIs constant than to port between APIs holding the CPU constant.

After that, target netbooks, but instead of restricting netbooks to Atoms or Nanos, use other processors as well - ARM, MIPS and PPC. That way, they can have boxes that just run their OS (although some people will run them w/ some Linux or another), but in which case, the Amiga OS won't be behind all modern OSs in terms of capability, since it'll be able to incorporate and use all services available in modern OSs.

See above. IMO, there is essentially no momentum left to get the important software ported to a new system, so if they build it, probably almost nobody will come.

At some point users of an obsolete computing platform have to accept that time has passed it by and focus on enjoying it for what it is. Unless they like frustration.

How is being a single-user OS good? When I first got XP and was showing it to my wife, she actually liked the fact that every member of the family could have different accounts and profiles, so that aspect of NT (and Linux, BSD and the other unixes) has by now more or less come to be accepted.

I like the fact that drivers are in the Drivers folder, commands are in the Commands folder and so on, but it sounds like a mess if one were to want to uninstall anything. Instead of just uninstalling say, Myst, one would have to go to the libraries folder and look for all myst libraries and delete them, and do the same everywhere else.

The thing I heard is that Amiga's scripting language REXX was awesome, and it later moved to OS/2. That too was a rather good OS, and complaints about its overusage of memory was misplaced, given that NT far exceeded it when it XP replaced the Win95 family.

Which brings to mind an idea. How many of you have heard of OSFree? It's an FOSS version of OS/w, where they take the L4 microkernel, put the Presentation Manager personality on top of it, so that they have an OS/2 that is lightweight, but preserves all the advantages that OS/2 had. Since it's on a widely ported microkernel, this OS/2 would also be portable to any CPU architecture that L4 exists on, not just x86. And it wouldn't be a nightmare like IBM's Workplace OS attempt was.

Similarly, the Hyperion people could do something similar - take a microkernel, maybe L4, and then port the Amiga UI to it as a personality (just like Presentation Manager in the above example). After that, target netbooks, but instead of restricting netbooks to Atoms or Nanos, use other processors as well - ARM, MIPS and PPC. That way, they can have boxes that just run their OS (although some people will run them w/ some Linux or another), but in which case, the Amiga OS won't be behind all modern OSs in terms of capability, since it'll be able to incorporate and use all services available in modern OSs.

There are several cool zombie like OS:es that is ripe for resurrection: AmigaOS, MorphOS, Plan 9 and Haiku. One could even put an OpenStep foundation on top of any of these or something more conventional OS like Linux or xBSD and tap some similarities with iOS.

I quite agree w/ this - particularly Haiku/Be OS. Or see if they could buy something like QNX. Incidentally, could they buy BeOS from its Japanese owners Access Co? Is Chorus still a part of Sun/Oracle? That would be another suggestion. OS/2, as CornWetDog suggested, would need porting from x86 to ARM or Loongson, but instead, for simpler porting, use OSFree. I'm not sure which license it uses, and whether forking it into an inhouse version is an option.

I have another suggestion - why not just license from Oracle Sun's legacy JavaOS and picoJava, and have someone build the Java CPU - one that uses bytecode as its instruction set, and where JavaOS is a part of the firmware. Then buy/write an UI for this platform in Java, and have it sit on JavaOS, which provides all its functions, including the VM. Once they have this, all Java apps out there would be able to run on this.

OSFree is an open source alternative to OS/2. As IBM could not open source OS/2 because of over 300 licensed code bases that went into developing it, they instead spund it off to Serenity systems to create an OEM version of OS/2 named eComStation. But OSFree is an attempt to build an open sourced OS/2 from scratch to work with MS-DOS, OS/2 1.X command, OS/2 2.0 3.0 and 4.0 (Warp and Merlin), and even some eComStation compatibility. I am not sure if they will try a WIN-OS2 substation or use ODIN to run 16 bit and 32 bit Windows applications. ODIN was the OS/2 version of WINE.

OSFree hasn't reached Alpha phase yet, but they are working on creating a LiveCD version that boots, and a version of OSFree that runs in Linux but runs OS/2 programs inside of Linux, like that Borg or Ferengi version of OS/2 ran under Windows to run OS/2 programs in a different OS.

Why has Slashdot almost ignored AROS Amiga Research OS? It has gone beyond what HaikuOS has and has had a LiveCD and VMWare image for a long time now. It is based on AmigaOS 3.1 APIs and written from scratch, IIRC AmigaOS 4.X was using AROS code to build it on. So while it is like an older AmigaOS 3.1 version it can run in a virtual machine or LiveCD or even a version that runs inside of Linux to run AROS programs. What Amiga Fan that runs Linux wouldn't want an AROS subsystem? All AROS lacks is decent applications, but that is being worked on with the AROS bounty system.

FreeDOS is a MS-DOS replacement. It can run the FreeGEM replacement GUI for Windows 3.X (basically a 16 bit GUI that runs GEM programs over DOS) or OpenGEM. But most think OpenGEM is the better of the 16 bit GUIS for DOS.

ReactOS is based on WINE to become a stand alone OS that is Windows XP/2003 compatible. It hasn't reached Beta stage yet, and lacks proper driver support, but it can be run via VmWare virtual machines or a LiveCD. The Virtual machine comes bundled with QEMU available from the downloads section and it is good to download and try out. It doesn't support modern 32 bit Windows programs but can be made to run the older ones that don't require .Net libraries or the BITS service. In about five years time it should become stable enough to reach the Beta stage and support most drivers and be able to be installed to an actual machine. By the time it reaches 1.0 status, Microsoft will have abandoned Windows XP and most likely have Windows 8 or 9 with a Virtual PC mode to run XP software like Windows 7 does. The Windows Legacy Software is not going away, and Microsoft proved that with the XP Virtual Machine for Windows 7 Pro and up users. Many software companies cannot afford to upgrade their software to work on Windows Vista or above and many small businesses have their old business software written for DOS, 16 bit Windows, or Windows XP or lower, and cannot afford to buy new machines that run Windows Vista or Windows 7 and lose compatibility with their legacy Windows software for business.

IBM cannot open source OS/2 because it paid over 300 different companies to license their code to make OS/2. IBM would have to pay all 300 companies money to own their code to open source it and doubtful all of them will agree with that.

Your best bet is OSFree and people need to donate money, code, time, etc to get their project out of alpha and beta tests to develop an open sourced OS/2 compatible operating system or at least a WINE type program for Linux that runs OS/2 programs.

but that iDeneb project is way cheaper as it does not require a dongle.

Others have found a way to hack their BIOS to use the Apple OEM ID and do their own EFI to run Mac OSX to fool OSX to think it is running on a real Apple Macintosh. The nice thing about EEPROMS is that you can flash update them easily, and anyone who knows machine language can hack their own BIOS file into one that can easily pass for an Apple Macintosh BIOS.

As for people like me, we don't even need a dongle to make our Intel PC turn into an Amiga that is even cooler than an Apple Macintosh running OSX, and has a much lower memory footprint so it runs faster than OSX, and has an interface and look and feel like OSX or Vista, but is 100% free, 100% open source, and 100% legal.

For those who want to pirate OSX, get real, get AROS instead and support AROS developers to develop more AROS drivers and software. Why settle for a monopoly from Microsoft or Apple, when you can be free and use a non-monopoly OS that will run on almost any PC, Mac, Amiga, MIPS, PowerPC, etc system on the market?

You want an alternative to Windows? Wait until ReactOS is done. It will run Windows applications. If you want an alternative to Windows that does not run Windows programs get HaikuOS when it is ready as it is a free and open source BeOS operating system. Once OSFree is finished it will be a free OS/2 open source OS, but I heard they will make it run under Linux to run OS/2 applications. Support your favorite free open source operating system instead of pirating OSX. Who cares enough about bloatware to pirate OSX or Vista, they are both bloated and buggy! If you want a free OS, get a free open source OS as I listed above when they are finished and out of beta testing. If you can't wait join in their beta program and give them feedback on how to fix it, or join the developers to help them get done faster.

Boycott Vista and OSX, and get Linux instead and install a Macintosh skin on Linux instead of pirating OSX.

#1 Develop X86 versions of it to run on PC systems. Use UAE to run the older 68K Amiga software on it.

#2 Develop PPC versions of it for the Amiga PPC, PowerMac, and CHRP hardware sets so people with older systems can run it as well.

#3 Get better development tools for it. Developers want to be able to write with more than C++, Python, Free Pascal, AREXX and legacy AmigaDOS tools. Get Novell to port the Mono Development system to AmigaOS 5, get Delphi ported, get RealBASIC and TrueBASIC ported, get Ruby, Perl, Smalltalk, XBASIC, GCC, and Java ported as well.

#4 Get software developers to write AmigaOS 5 ports of their popular software. Get OpenOffice.Org, StarOffice, Quicken, Turbo Tax, Photoshop, Lotus Smartsuite, etc ported.

#5 Get Blizzard, and other game makers to write AmigaOS 5 versions of their popular games.

#6 Get the F/OSS projects ported to AmigaOS 5, like Firefox, Thunderbird, Eurdora, GNUCash, Apache, CVS, The Gimp, etc ported.

#7 Port WINE to the AmigaOS 5 X86 version, and have it built in. Also work on the OSFree project to give the ability to run OS/2 programs. Also work with the Haiku OS project to run BeOS applications on AmigaOS 5. This way you can run software written for Windows, OS/2, and BeOS on one OS, a feat never before done.

#8 Port NDIS Wrapper to use Windows drivers for AmigaOS 5, in case we cannot find any native Windows drivers. Also allow Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OSX drivers to work as well.

#9 Work in parallel with the Amiga Research OS that AmigaOS 3.5 was based on, so that they can give AROS AmigaOS 5.0 features.

#10 Get Virtual Machines ported to AmigaOS 5.0 like VMWare, Bochs, QEMU, Parallels, etc. Also get emulators ported like MAME, MESS, VICE, UAE, Stella, ZNES, SNES, Virtual Gameboy Advance, Basilisk II, VMac, ported to the Amiga OS 5 system.

is improve the kernel so that it can use Windows drivers as well as Linux drivers to solve the hardware incompatibility that Linux suffers from.

If I were to improve an application it would be WINE, adding in better DirectX support and more support for Windows games so we could convert the Gameheads from Windows to Linux with WINE, and it would affect the sales of Windows.

Linux lacks a DRM media player, right now Windows has the advantage with Internet movie rentals and other media files that can play on Windows, but not Linux. You would need a freeware media player that can handle the DRM of iTunes/Quicktime, Windows Media Player, Real Player. Of course it cannot be under the GPL, and it cannot be bundled with Linux, but it can be an optional download for Linux users who want to use it.

If I had millions to spend, I'd have Windows Game Developers develop popular games for Linux to prove that there can be a commercial games market. Get Blizzard, Electronic Arts, 2K, Activision, etc seed money to rewrite or port their popular games to Linux.

If I had millions more to spend, I'd have application companies develop software like Wordperfect Office, Lotus Smartsuite, Photoshop, Quark Express, Paintshop, and other popular applications to Linux. I'd also give Mozilla seed money to write open source versions of Word processors, Spreadsheets, Presentation Software, and other Office software for Linux and multiple platforms that can use the MS-Office file formats, as well as open source file formats. The Mozilla code has an HTML editor that can be the basis for a good Word processor. It can also be used to tweak it into a spreadsheet and presentation software.

If I had millions more to spend, I'd give money to the OSFree project to get OS/2 applications to run under Linux, the Haiku OS project to get BeOS applications to run under Linux, the Amiga Research OS project to get AmigaDOS/AmigaOS applications to run under Linux, and I would fund money into a project to make an application to translate OSX API calls to Linux ones, so Linux can run OSX applications. Then Linux would be able to run almost any software from almost any OS platform, and people won't be able to complain of a lack of applications for Linux.

You can find a solution(s) to your problem at one or more
of the following locations:

http://www.centos.org

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/

http://en.opensuse.org

http://www.opensolaris.org/

http://www.ecomstation.com/

http://www.redhat.com

http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html

http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/

http://www.openbsd.org/

http://www.freebsd.org/

http://www.netbsd.org/

http://www.dragonflybsd.org/

http://www.osfree.org/doku/en:start

http://www.skyos.org/

http://www.freeos.com/

http://www.minix3.org/

Added to bypass the stupid slashdot lameness filter which apparently doesn't like a post full of links. WTF is wrong with the
stupid lameness filter? Jeez, what does it want, for us to type paragraphs of meaningless drivel just to get past the lameness filter?
Sheeesh. OK, this is really stupid. Why don't ajfajf al;djal a fa fa lkdf jaa fal ja;ljf af af ajf;lajf alfjalf a fjal;fjafl; jaflakjf af;laj
jalkfaj fjf af af fajjjajal jajfa f afjdlakej2233 2235t2352 dsfalkfjal f 222j2 afdkja f23 2 2 2t2352322 233252352 2323232.

There is an effort underway to create an open source clone of OS/2. You die-hard OS2'ers might want to check it out and get involved...

I dunno about that, but I'm waiting for the open-source OS/2 clone to become
available so we can have Debian GNU/OS/2 available.

Some people in this discussion might be interested
to know that there is a project underway to create a "from scratch" clone of OS/2, under an open-source license.

See http://www.osfree.org/index.php for more details.

In all seriousness, if you have stuff like that, definitely don't just throw it out. Put it on E-Bay or something, and give people who might be in need of it a chance to buy it off of ya.

There is a project underway to create an open-source OS/2 clone, and those guys could possibly use things like compilers, redbooks, manuals, API specs, or even applications (for testing, maybe).

osFree

They're currently creating drop-in replacements for OS/2's command line utilities.