Slashdot Mirror
Where Have the OS/2 Junkies Gone?
Nick writes "We all remember OS/2, such a fine operating system that was once much heralded in certain circles and had alot of promise. What most people don't know is that it still is alive and kicking. Many of you may even know its history. What gets me, however, is how its popularity dropped off solely on marketing even though OS/2's performance outweights any version of Windows I've ever used (unfortunately OS/2 is no longer cool and elite like the many unix-like operating systems out there). So how many of us Slashdotters still run and use OS/2?" Every so often, I still pine for the WPS, but KDE makes things almost as easy, so life is good. I remember OS/2 was always more popular over in Europe. Is it still in use there, or has its use faded as it has here in the US?
You can still buy OS/2 but the package now says "eComStation" - eComStation.com. Just do a google search for "eComStation" and you'll get lots more info.
In short, there are plenty of OS/2 users today, although most of them are in Europe. In fact, if Slashdot weren't so US-centric, then the editors would have realized how stupid this "Ask Slashdot" is. Why? Because the biggest OS/2 conference of the year is being held right now in Belgium! The 2nd-biggest was held last month in Toronto.
There are actually two versions of OS/2 available today: the Convenience Pack (CP) from IBM and eComStation from Serenity Systems. eCS is a VAR version of the CP, meaning that it's basically the CP code base, with an enhanced installer, lots of third-party apps built-in, and a bunch of other enhancements. I'm running it right now on a dual Athlon system - the Tyan Tiger MP works great for OS/2, and yes, OS/2 does support SMP systems.
There have been lots of advances in OS/2 over the past year. Project Odin is serious competition for Wine, and can run many Windows apps that Wine doesn't. Plus, Virtual PC for OS/2 was just announced and will be available in a couple months.
Device support has also improved significantly. The only major category of devices that isn't supported is Firewire, but everything else is very thoroughly supported. In fact, video support is phenomenal, thanks to the SciTech Display Doctor video drivers. With these drivers, OS/2 can do what Windows and Linux can't: you can change your video card without reinstalling or reconfiguring any drivers!
I could go on for hours, but I'm going to let other OS/2 users fill in the rest.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
I suppose it's hard to know that Warp 4 has continued to develop because IBM has not been advertising it. Up to now IBM has not been charging for bug fixes or upgrades. Warp 4 client is now at FP 15 - which puts it at the same level at Aurora - Warp Server. Dynamite! Stable, fast and needs less hardware and memory than Winx or any version since Win 3.1.
What is eCom Station? The new client offered by Serenity Systems. It is based on Warp 4, plus a whole lot more, such as a choice of office suites for starters - Smartsuite 1.6 and Star Office are BOTH included. eCS includes Serenity Systems own software as well, Wise Machine - new, efficient way to install and reinstall software without hassle. The list of included software is too long to itemise. See http://www.ecomstation.com/ or http://ecomstation.mensys.nl/ - other suppliers in Canada, US, Australia...
Wait for news about when the package in development will be released that puts Winx on the eCom Station desktop for those who cannot do without certain Windows programs.
Although without any great fanfare, except in OS/2 circles, there have been several upgrades to the OS/2 Warp OS in the last 6 months. The first was from BigBlue (IBM) in the form of OS/2 Warp 4 Convienence Pack 1. This is a "round-up" of fixpacks, new hardware drivers (including USB and DVD) and a few new utilities. This is what I am presently running. CP2 is due out in the next 6 weeks and it will include further options that otherwise the user would need to download and install themselves, such as a new IBM Browser based on the NETscape / Mozilla 6 code. These Convienience packs, dont change the look and feel of OS/2's WPS.
//www.warpstock.de for details.
The release in the last few weeks of eCommstation from Serenity Systems (an American IBM Business partner) certainly does change the look of OS/2. eCommstation is based on the IBM Convienience pack base but has several third party (commercial / shareware & freeware) packages integrated into it. Some consider this to be the answer to Windows XP's desktop look.
There is more OS/2 application software available today than ever before!
Wordprocessors:
Lotus have currently V 1.6 of their smartsuite available (this is the equivalent of the Millenium edition on the Windows platform) and are about to relaese version 1.7, with V 1.8 rumoured to be in development also.
Sun's Star Office V5 is a (IMHO) better office package than Microsoft Office or Lotus Smartsuite and its Freeware. Unfortunately Sun are not going to release V6 for OS/2 however it is reported that the WIN32 version works well via ODIN (see below).
Browsers:
Netscape 4.61 is still doing good service.
Opera have released a beta of their OS/2 version of "the fastest browser on the planet", however Java does not work yet. A fully functional version is expected to be released very soon. This browser can "emulate" IE to sites that refuse to work with anything else!
IBM have released their new Browser and will be updating it. If has full Java 2 support and has had some speed improvements over the freeware version.
Mozilla/2 or Warpzilla are two names for the freeware version of the Netscape 6 browser. At present this browser only supports JAVA 1.1 however as new releases come out of this almost every day, I would expect this also to support JAVA 2 very soon.
CD-Burning:
As well as the commercial RSJ product, the freeware CDRecord has advanced to a point where it is reliable and works well with all recent CD-R / RW drives IDE or SCSI.
Scanning:
HP scanners have always been well supported under OS/2 however through another freeware application SANE/2 many many more scanners are also supported. At present the scanner still needs to be SCSI. Some people have claimed success with some makes of parrallel port scanners but no support is yet available for USB attached scanners, but I can't belive this will stay sop for much longer now that IBM has extended the USB support in OS/2 to cover the OHCI standard as well as the UHCI one.
Windows 32 Bit application support:
I guess I saved the best 'til last! If you can't find a native OS/2 application you may be able to run the WIN32 version of a product under OS/2 now thanks to one of two applications. The first has been in development for siome time, getting better and better with every release - this is ODIN (previously know as WIN32-OS2). This "interpretor" takes Windows binary executable code and converts it to OS/2 executable code "on-the-fly" amending calls to apis to address either OS/2's own APIs or those supported by code within ODIN. Although this method obviously slows down the execution of the WIN32 code, it often isn't that much after initial loading (where the code is converted from Win32 to OS/2). What runs is native OS/2 code ! Examples of applications that run well via ODIN are Lotus Notes V5, Star Office 6, Real Player V8 and many, many small Windows utilities like WinZip.
The second WIN32 under OS/2 option was only announced a couple of weeks ago. The Connectix Virtual PC is going to be extended to support the running of OS/2 under Windows and Windows under OS/2. In this case a full version of Windows will need to be purchased/licensed (this is not needed with ODIN). Beta versions of the Virtual-PC code along with lots of the applications and code described above will be on show at Warpstock Europe this month. Checkout http:
As has been so often said, If OS/2 is dead, someone ought to tell the 70% of Finanicial institutions and many military, govermental and Nuclear Power companies around the world that rely on it for it stability and performance !
Cheers/2
Ed Durrant
And, of course, where do you think JFS came from? :) It's not the AIX version that Linux users are getting...
ISTR a quote from an IBM executive saying that whatever the Linux community asks for, IBM will look into open sourcing.
OTOH, the kernel, the graphics API, some of the file system drivers, and the networking subsystem undoubtedly all still fall under the joint copyright with Microsoft that IBM signed a decade ago. Probably Microsoft would need to give its permission for any of those to be open sourced, and we can guess how likely that is...
Of course, the Workplace Shell also includes a bunch of third-party technology, like NeXTstep design elements, TrueType, Adobe TypeManager, etc.
It would probably take IBM years of coding effort and legal wrangling to open-source OS/2's innards. And frankly, I doubt that IBM management would consider it worth the effort. A great pity, but there you have it...