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Review of eComStation OS/2 1.0
JigSaw writes: "OSNews features a long and in-depth article about the latest version of eComStation OS/2 1.0. eCS 1.0 is developed by Serenity Systems after they licensed the technology from IBM when the latter had abandoned any hope for the success of OS/2. The article also has information about the future version of eCS, 1.10, which it will be branded as Entry level, Upgrade and WorkPlace. The Workplace version will include all the software one needs to run Java2, Win16 & DOS applications 'natively', and it also includes an X11 server plus a full copy of Connectix's Virtual PC that can run any flavour of Windows and Linux. In fact, eCS OS/2 Workplace will include a full Linux distribution as part of its VirtualPC package."
If it won't bluescreen, then I'm sold!
Yay!
Whatever.
Twitter.com/TrentonHyatt
Are these two the same story ?
When OS/2 2.0 came out it was far superior to Windows 3.x from a technical perspective. It always has been and always will be. Unfortunately application compatibility has always been the key. Why run Linux, OS/2, MacOS when you can run Office faster under Windows? Until the MicroSloth Windows / Office hegemony is broken we'll have to keep on neglecting terrific operating systems just because Office doesn't run as well on them...
No, OS/2 is dying. Get with the program!
sulli
RTFJ.
eComStation
Wow... That is the most "buzzword compliant" name that I have ever heard.
Who do I make the check out to?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
who uses os/2?
ya, is anoyne using os/2 anymore? There are probably more BEos users
Hmmm. I always did like the workplace shell and SOM. Maybe it's time I pulled my copy of Visual Age C++ out of it's hiding place.
Chip H.
You can find a lot of information on ecomstation here. They have information on product contents, options, and availability, as well as support, previews, and links to reviews, distributors and resellers.
That is one ugly UI !! Well, good to see an old but good OS chugging along!
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
which it will be branded as Entry level, Upgrade and WorkPlace
I can't imagine what a nightmare this idiotic Laurel and Hardy naming scheme going to be to support.
Which version do you have? Upgrade? An Entry level upgrade? you can't upgrade from workplace, thats a lower version. You want to buy an upgrade? Do you want the full version of upgrade or the upgrade of the entry level version of workplace?
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
It's nice that this product still has a life.
Many dedicated people spent their years developing OS/2. It'd be a shame to completely dispose of it, so it's nice that someone is continuing to put love into the product.
Of course, it'll never make a dime, but still, I'm happy. It's better than the fate of so many other software products, whose source code ends up in a warehouse on an obsolete format of tape.
It has lots of interesting things in it, handled through an integrated but separate installer. I like that. The installation stuff is not kept in memory every time the system boots, as is it in the Registry.
It looks cool, even. Boots off a cdrom to a GUI. Like that.
What I find distressing is that while the distro has a lot in it, it sends out a disinsentive to ISVs to compete with it. I suspect that the inclusion of IBM Works and Win-OS/2 gave OS/2 users access to word processors that ended up driving the market away from the OS/2 word processors like Describe.
What is really needed, in both the OS/2 and Windows worlds, is competing Distros. Wouldn't that be just grand. :)
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
OS/2 is outdated -- why still use it? Get with the times.
more like OS/2 disastros
heck, I feel like a rant tonight.
Yep, unfortunately, MS quality control seems to have been aimed at the level of how many things we can we get away breaking ( like Lotius, etc) without people running away in terror.
right now, they could put out complete crap, and people would still buy it because they have to, not because of any apparent merit. Marketing and accounting love it, but it is a complete insult to the engineers, not that account or marketing would care much.
It is like engineering a new hardware widget. Some cool engineer invents something and does a damn good job. the prototype is excellent. it then gets fed to the production engineer, who work damn hard at trying to produce the widget as cheaply as possible, and still have it work.
MS engineers probably produce great shit, then it hits the marketing integration tem, and the result is crap. It doesn't survive well being integrated with the Microsft marketing vision.
It would be like seeing borgified art.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Facinating stories -- I was an OS/2 user back when Object Desktop (whoops, I forgot their real name -- Stardock?) was trying to rescue OS/2. I was really disappointed when they failed. They did a REALLY good job in all their other work, though.
:-). That would be the ultimate solution, I suppose -- but on the other hand, this would make a MOSIX cluster much easier to set up, since the individual machines couldn't be independantly misconfigured.
Question: I see a new feature in the next version of eComStation, network boot. In this, the entire OS is stored on the disk of one machine, and the other machines boot entirely from it -- all config files, everything. All processing is done on the clients, but the files are stored on the server. That's convenient!
I know X can do part of this, but it still puts the processing on the server; NFS can do another part, but it's enormously slow and bulky (and VERY odd to work with).
So is there any complete solution I can install on a 'terminal' PC so that all booting, storage, and so on is done on a central system, but all processing and running is done on my system -- and it all just works, whether I'm using console or X, svgamode or KDE?
I'm sure that when MOSIX is done that'll be easy
-Billy
I always thought the OS/2 (warp onwards) kernel sounded good, purely from the idea of a fully re-entrant kernel that booted (including GUI) in 4Mb. So, this came as a pleasant surprise:
Another cool trick you can do with OS/2 is that you can turn off and on any additional CPUs you may have, on the fly.
Holy shit. And....
OS/2 (reportedly) scales wonderfully on machines up to 64 CPUs.
And so runs a good chance of being a kick arse server kernel. Are we going to see Debian/OS2?
With a price of $299 for the normal version and $399 for the version that supports SMP
So that's a no then. Oh well.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
This is great!
I did a lot of work under OS/2 years ago...and in 1995, I was doing full-motion video in multi-media applications for Trade Shows and Public Information Kiosks using touchscreen systems. One of my applications, Touch Ottawa/Hull, won a design award! I basically moved from OS/2 to Linux, and didn't have to suffer under the Windows for my personal use. Unfortunaely, I am a consultant, and I have to be able to help Windows LUsers when needed. But, luckily, most of my current stuff has been with Linux!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Howard Stern used to use OS/2 Back in the day (around '95), I heard him talking about it once. I doubt he still does.
Even more strangly, Rush Limbaugh uses MacOS.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Ahh. Reminiscing. My first job out of college was working for IBM Personal Software Products writing OS/2 Success Stories. There weren't many, I think Traveller's insurance was like the only real one that we didn't have to massage.
Does anyone remember when OS/2 Warp was going to come out at around the same time as Windows 95 and there was a shortage of floppies because Windows needed like 40 and OS/2 needed 70 or so? Those were the good ol' days. When a re-install meant sitting in front of your computer for hours like a trained dog waiting for the beep so you could flip another disk in...
Someone mentioned the UI and how ugly it is... Man, remember the tabs for the options? They were on the side and hideous. And the folders? And the icons? God. The whole thing was horrible. Just thinking about the billions of dollars spent on OS/2 in it's lifetime makes me want to weep.
-Russ
Me
Shhhhh not so loud! I'm just now finishing up a project to get a major credit card company off of OS/2 once and for all. If they "discover" this, they may buy it and extend my contract!
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Of course, it does it all poorly, but hey, you get what you pay for.
IBM really f**ked this one up. When OS/2 Warp 3 came out back in '94, it ran its own apps, as well as Windows 3.1 apps. The cool part was that because of the way it used protective memory addressing it actually ran Windows 3.1 programs faster, and less crash-prone. Only IBM's marketing department could drop the ball on something so cool. They could have come after M$ with both guns blazing, but instead they half-assed it. It wasn't even an issue of compatability then either. Windows 95 wasn't out yet so all the top selling packages on the market then ran on OS/2...
:)
I really hope these eCom (gay name) people get it right
--Jon
"I used to run OS/2 back ..." posts, which is understandable...
/. land?
With the progress of hardware in the last 4 years (since the last release of OS/2, IIRC) and software in the last 6 years (w32-wise), it doesn't IMHO make a lot of sense to run an OS which may not even support your hardware, and even if it does, is there even new software (aside from GNU & the odd shareware droppings) wich will run native on it?
What can you get from this you can't get from GNU/Linux or FreeBSD? (both support win16 apps under WINE, unless I'm mistaken)
Are there any "I've been using OS/2 since.." posters instead of "I used to use..." posters out there in
PS the pricetag is hefty for an nostolgia OS, IMHO.
Until earlier this year, I worked at IBM Austin on the OS/2 base team, mostly analyzing core dumps and the like. I remember hearing about this there, and was surprised that no one - including anyone in development management - had ever heard of it. While I applaud Security Systems efforts to attempt to market this OS to the public (lets face it - IBM gave up years ago), I'd be very interested to see where this goes from a support perspective. None of the IBM coders who still provide defect support for OS/2 have any involvement in this. If a nasty bug appears in any of the code, IBM isn't likely to fix it, and I'd assume that OS/2 fixpaks won't work with this (last I heard, they were going to charge subscriptions to receive them, anyway). I would assume that SS doesn't have a full code license, as I can't believe M$ would allow anyone a full code license - and FYI, yes they still have a say - even if they completely yanked out the Win-OS/2 code, it's so tightly integrated within PMShell, you'd never be completely free of it as it would most likely require a complete re-write. That's a few million lines of code, large portions of which are entirely in x86 assembly. Hardly a weekend job. ;-)
A few corrections: Unless the guys at SS made some substantial modifications to the boot loader (not very likely), the bit about having to boot off of a HPFS partition is blatently false. Os/2 supports boot off of fat, fat32 (with the danidasd freeware fat32 IFS driver - I forget who made it, but VERY nice), or HPFS386 (the filesystem the eBusiness and earlier server versions could utiliza, albeit you had to purchase it as a seperate license). IIRC, JFS partitions were non-bootable, but there were so many problems with the IFS driver, you'd be insane to try it, anyway.
I can also appreciate what the reviewer was mentioning about LVM - while it is extremely powerful and flexible, it is an absolute bitch. In fact, you can't completely get rid of it once installed on a drive without doing a low-level format (at least for the versions that shipped with MCP/ACP - this might have changed since). It was an in-joke with the support staff that a virus (LVM) had made it into the release build.
Anyway, best of luck to these guys. I might consider purchasing it if it weren't so damn much. It'll be interesting to see where this goes, and if there are still enough OS/2 nuts out there to provide a niche market for it.
"Oh my God! The dead have risen! And they're voting Republican!" - Bart Simpson
Did the Slashdot editors really feel it necessary to use the IBM logo on this story? This product is about OS/2 users being able to use their favorite OS in spite of the boobs at IBM who kept selling them on the OS/2 pipedream while having every intention of letting it rot. Yet you throw this logo up on the story as another bitter reminder, as if IBM should be taking any credit for the people who will be made happy by this announcement.
Seriously.
OS/2 is what the supervisor PC's that control the zSeries mainframes run!
Open up a mainframe and inside is a Thinkpad running OS/2 to control it...
It's not going anywhere anytime soon...
--NBVB
OS/2 on a PS/2, half an operating system on half a comptuer.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Honestly - it's about time we saw something like this. I have my boxed set of OS/2 2.0 that I ran instead of Win 3.1 for a while (but later ditched because prorgams wouldn't work right.) It was a great OS - better multitasking, memory managment, etc.
For the new OS/2 to include the system apps to run apps from just about any operating system in existance (Java and legacy Windows apps natively, Linux and newer Windows programs in emulation, and X11 for native Unix apps) it will undoubtedly make it a lot easier to get servers up and running. Want Apache httpd to do your web serving, Oracle for your database, and a unix ftpd, you'd be able to do it from one box, out of the box. That alone is worth quite a bit of money to me.
this is OS/2 v5.
It just might go as well as BeOS v5.
Oh, wait....
(only a quad boot? C'mon I had a quintuple boot 98se, 2000, slack 7, redhat 7 and BeOS 5...all via (drum roll) LILO! Taaadaaa!)
Not to offend, but linux zealots are interesting... os/2 had zealots, but they were called the "user base". Some were pretty scary when you brought up Windows {shudder}
My experience, mind you. I guess it is hard to be a zealot when you are...OOOOooo, shiney operating system!!!
Moose
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Crappy UI aside, OS/2 Warp 3 was one of the most rock solid, fast systems I ever got to use, and it was that way long before NT ever came around.
Having noce worked at a large Air Conditioning company (who will remain anonymous, but who has their name on a large [and non-airconditioned DOH!] dome in Syracuse NY USA) we used to run upwards of 100 OS/2 machines for the sole purpose of maintaining the entire international email system, and it worked, by-and-large very very well. Had IBM early on worked to improve the UI, enhance the kernel and memory access, beef up hardware support and come up with a serious file/print server to compete with M$'s (then new) NT 4, they might still be using it today.
As it were, NT 4 Wks and Server came out and had a faster kernel, way fast networking and a friendlier (~laff~) UI... so we switched. Switched so much in fact that we pared it down to 20 or so NT boxes for the price of 100 OS/2's...
As far as I'm concerned, IBM had the desktop arena by the balls and totally blew it. (no pun intended)
So hats off to you eCom, I'll give you all the credit in the world, but methinks M$ is far too entrenched, and Mac OS X and Linux far too visible with developers to give OS/2 a real shot at the desktop or development platforms right now.
adequacy is a pile of shit... a working example of why stupid people should not be allowed to own computers. it's sad that there are SOOOO MANY people dumb enough to fall for their childish, immature stories.
K-Maps kick ass!
Aye aye aye aye, I am the Frito bandito.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
OS/2 was cool because you could run OS/2 native applications (there were not many) and you could run Windows applications. Why didn't OS/2 specific applications take off? Because it was stupid to write OS/2 applications if you could get by with the inferior multitasking of Win 3.1.
... slowly with vestiges kept alive for a while by islands of hobbyists that appreciate it or keep it for snob appeal. The market is not big enough to sustain an OS development and support effort without users that must have THAT OS to run their critical apps.
Think about it (back in the early 90's): Write a program in Windows and all the OS/2 & Warp users can run it AND all the Windows 3.1 users can too. Write a native application for OS/2 and you will see the difference in sales pretty quick.
Producing an OS/2 that runs native Windows + Linux ironically makes their previous business model flaw larger in that there is NO incentive for developers to write native OS/2 applications.
Sorry, this one is destined to die again
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
What's so fucking noble about being able to endure RMS's BO?
OS/2 might be fine and dandy technically, definately more stable and robust than Windows and easier to setup and use than Linux for most folks.
However, it's gotta be the most painful OS to use (on a regular basis) that I've ever come across.
I've actually had to work with OS/2 quite a bit in the past. My first internship (summer after my 1st year) was at IBM, doing testing for one of their software products. Had to use NT, OS/2 and Linux (all the official IBM sanctioned distrubutions) on a daily basis. Everytime I had to boot into OS/2 on my machine, I would cringe. It was ugly, the UI made no sense (no okay and cancel buttons, instead changes take effect when you close the window unless you first "undo"). Even the standard IBM hardware I was using wasn't fully supported. And the highly praised Workplace Shell worked great in theory (great OO design), but wasn't really all that useful in practice.
I couldn't even critize it out loud at work as many of my co-workers was still using OS/2 as their primary desktop (some of them even had a hand in developing it at some point in time).
Anyway, OS/2 was definately an OS made by engineers for engineers. If they only hired some artsy-fartsy people to design the UI, it could be IBM's OS X
The article should have been called "Death by a Thousand Cuts - Part Two".
Here's one. I've been using OS/2 since 1994. I used it today.
Part of my job is to maintain DOS applications. The compiler/linker (Clipper/Blinker) runs under DOS, and my fingers' favorite editor (Edix) runs under DOS. For doing this kind of stuff, OS/2 is king and there is no close second-place. Yes, Windows can do it too, but Windows is very clunky and inconvenient.
As far as I know, that's the only major advantage OS/2 has over Linux/FreeBSD and it's a hell of a small niche. OS/2 also has a nicer GUI than anything else I've seen, but I can get by with anything.
Lately I've been writing a web app in php, and OS/2 can ssh into my OpenBSD test box just as well as anything else. And it mounts Samba shares just fine. I suppose I could get apache and php for OS/2 but I haven't bothered, because I needed to justify the OpenBSD infiltration. ;-)
About once a week (rough average) I have to run something that requires Windows. The frequency is going to slowly increase with time and someday it may become frequent enough that I can't justify time spent rebooting. But I don't know when I'll reach that point. Hopefully WINE will be far enough along by then that I will get to switch from something that doesn't suck to something else that doesn't suck. But we'll see...
FWIW, I am not interested in this new ecomstation thingie. I can't figure out who would want it. First time OS/2 users? No fucking way. Nobody should switch to OS/2 at this point, unless they're unlucky enough to inherit my job or something. Old OS/2 users upgrading? No, none of the new features of this version of OS/2 would be useful to someone who is already getting by wiht Warp 4. I just don't get it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It took you "many years" to figure that out?
I remember using OS/2 Warp 3 years ago on an old 486, since it flew on that machine; unlike win95 which ran like a piece of crap. OS/2 was a really fast operating system with direct virtual machine capabilities built in (you could boot operating systems from image files in the OS without any special software). Here's how OS/2 died. Back in the early 90's, Microsoft and IBM co-developed OS/2, and it was called Microsoft OS/2. When version 1.2 came out, the two companies split, and IBM continued production all the way to version 4, while Microsoft rewrote the kernel and transformed it into Windows NT. If you do speed benchmarks, you'll easily realize that NT is far more bloated than any version of OS/2. NT was and is a RAM hog, while OS/2 3 ran on 4 megs of RAM easily. If IBM opened up the source code for OS/2 and strictly made it illegal for microsoft to steal any kernel code advances, then we would all be set. We could develop a Windows-killer OS. That's what OS/2 was destined to be since version 2. It's funny how the development of OS/2 was the second time Microsoft ripped off IBM; the first was DOS when Microsoft sold IBM PC-DOS and kept MS-DOS for themselves. Then it was Windows NT versus OS/2.
#Secret Windows Source Code, in MS C% - if (uptime >= "24 hours") then bsod() else print "Windows License Violation!"
I'm thinking back to 1996 or so, I was still
doggedly using OS/2 and I went to the bookstore
and instead of there being more OS/2 books there
were fewer and I had looked at all of them.
My wife and I were getting into the car to
go out of town and this book linux unleashed
caught my eye. I bought the book and I was
totally engrossed during the car trip. Gradually
I would up with more linux machines and fewer
OS/2 machines until I only come across the install media when I clean out my desk.
Hey it happened to ME its got to be interesting, right?
Why are you all calling it a scooter? I'd say that's a bit of an understatement.
I think all the people who are saying "electric scooter, big whoop. $3,000, yeah right" are slightly missing the point. Yeah, it's kind of wimpy for the price tag. Yeah, it's kind of expensive, and it's questionable who would want to use it.
But this is just the first model. It's more sort of a proof of concept--a demonstration that the scooter can work, and looks as neat as all get-out in motion. As time goes on, the performance will improve and the price will fall.
Look at the Palm (Pilot). The first model was, what, 128K? With no backlight, no infra-red, or anything? And how high was the price tag? And now the Visor Deluxe, which was at one time the wet dream of anybody who even looked at a Palm, is only $130 brand new.
Look at the DVD player. The original models were expensive enough, the first bunch of discs were glitchy enough, that a lot of people scoffed and made snide remarks. But the DVD went on to become the fastest-adopted new consumer technology ever.
So here we have a relatively slow, electric-powered self-stabilizing scooter, for $3,000. Are very many of us going to buy it? Do very many of us have the money to sink into that sort of gee-gaw? No and no. I know I'm not going to be spending three grand on something like that myself, either. Nor would I be likely to spend two grand, or even one grand for that matter.
That's because OS/2 -WAS- going to be the next *Microsoft* operating system. It was the bridge between the old and the new. It was designed to run Win3 because it was supposed to be a bridge, not an end. Yes, the new OS was to have been based on OS2 (not Culter's vision), but that was out there. Gates' saw, in a Hilter-Stalin sort of way, that OS2 was only good so long as it kept IBM occupied. And on went windows... and down went os2.
... no, it's all true.
True story. Except maybe
Given the option, I always go with a OS/2 server solution for web server installs. The stability is un believeable. I've had a number of systems that ran for years with the only reboot happining because of a major power outage, or being taken down for hardware maintenance (HD replacement, etc...). The scripting with REXX is probably th emost powerful scripting language I've ever used, contrary to what Perl fan-boys will tell you.
eComstation Standard $329.00
eComstation Std. with 30 Day Support $418.00
eComStation PRO $464.00
eComStation PRO with 30 Day Support $553.00
Who's going to pay that much? Maybe someone who has a big investment in OS/2, but that's not too many people anymore.
WWW
Wow, it's pretty damn obvious that market droids named this thing. "eComStation". Damn. Makes me wanna rush out in my Mazda MP3 and buy it now with my Titanium Visa.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Why is there a need for two different versions, one with SMP support, and one without? Shouldn't that be a install option?
Bottom of this page.
Does he talk about it any more?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I don't care if OS/2 can't run the latest games and Microsoft bloatware. It does an excellent job of reliably running our custom applications.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I used to run a two line bbs using maximus under os/2. On a measly old 386, even with both lines connected I could still keep working in several programs without any noticeable lag. I'd keep a terminal open to log in and chat or play games with my users and even keep a dos session open to play the latest apogee shareware games. Worked like a charm! I miss those days.
At the time, the only other viable options for running a multiline bbs with maximus were to run the dos version under desqview (task switching, very slow) or BLECH windows 3.1. OS/2 ran like a charm. Too bad IBM didn't have any faith in it as a desktop platform.
Now if only Stardock had aquired it...
Would be IBM to release the WPS and PM source code to the public, allowing then the porting to other operating systems of the best graphical user interface ever designed.
Just to give an example, it was -really- object oriented. you could derive and create a persistent object on the screen with a single function call, you could inherit properties from other objects (windows, icons) and asssign to one (some, all). Also, after creating 100 links to a file, if you moved that file every link updated itself to move to the new location (it worked like a charm, nothing in common with craps like MS Active Desktop).
That was possible in on a 486 with 8 Mb of ram. I just wonder how it will run today on a Beowulf cluster of...:)
Hi.
I'd like to mention, that VirtualPC from Connectix is currently ported to OS/2 by the Germany based company InnoTek.
It will contain full support of the full VirtualPC suite, of additional interest might be the OS/2 VirtualPC addons for Windows.
Members of InnoTek are also involved in the ODIN project.
Further information can be acquired from
http://www.innotek.de
Regards,
Oliver Fels
InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH
We are using OS/2 on a system running our voice mail software. The system supports about 4000 mail boxes on a PENTIUM 200 with 64MB of RAM. This system has only crashed once in six years of operation. Other than that the system has been shut down for a hardware upgrade (to the current 200Mhz processor), when a hard drive failed, when the system was upgraded to OS/2 ver. 3, and when the power was out long enough that our 30KW battery backup shut all the servers down three times over the past five years (we added the module to shut down the servers a year after the battery backup was added...we are a small university and couldn't afford it all at once). It was in continuous operation for close to three years before the hard drive crashed.
Never let it be said that IBM doesn't know how to create an operating system.
Why doesn't Slashdot have an OS/2 topic?
and then, A lot of windows users can not even tell if they are on windows 59 or windows TN or the 0002 os, and they are supposed to understand the upgrade.....
Doesn't include support from IBM. You can't apply an IBM OS/2 fixpack to eComStation. Has a truly strange non-IBM installer that craps out.
http://linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/print/3689/
Has a weird-looking non-OS/2 desktop (if you finally get it installed). Costs more than the real OS/2 from IBM.
Check this out.
Like WINE, Odin in a Win32 API, so OS2 can be natively Win32 compatible.
Odin has the potential to work much better than WINE, because OS2 & Windows share a bit of the same gene pool.
The OS2 version of Opera is a semi-ported Windows app that utilises Odin libraries, as a shortcut to save on the work involved in a full port.
That's my take.
I assume its similar to the way some Windows games that have been ported to Linux utilise WINE libraries.
Next time you want to get your money out do you want the ATM or your bank teller's PC to pull a BSOD.
Banks utilile OS2 by the millions & I think always will.
I doubt bank telling Software will progress much beyond what it alread.
After 90% of software/hardwar upgrades are just for wanking off.
Look at 486 Win 3.11 Netware networks, they are as good for browsing the web & writing letters as anything that's come out since.
I know because just of late I've been coming across heaps of Win3.11.Netware networks & they all seem to be running as well as they ever have been.
Consequently I bet in 10 years time the banks will still be using OS2 (oh & QNX - there's the odd QNX ATM too)
its being diskless but doing the processing locally that's different.
With those NCs the processing was all done of the server - which meant they were as slow as shit with 200 clients all running programs simultaniously (even just 7 NC clients will slow a Dual P3 500 app server to a crawl)
Okay, this might be unintentional flamebait...
Last time I looked at the OS/2 API (many, many years ago), I walked away with the thought that it was overdone. As an example: the CreateProcess function call had something like 10 parameters!!! It seemed like a function such as that should be simple, since invariably it would be called a lot (e.g., fork!). Of course, then there is the perspective that if there was a simpler function, I could have found it if there developer documentation had been friendlier?
I subscribe to the Unix philosophy of functions doing 1 thing and doing it very well. The amount of overloading on those API calls (due to all the flags and options passed in) could break the bank. And there's a lot of evidence that a simpler design leads to longer-lasting software: Linux, to name just one.
I always thought the complexity of OS/2's APIs scared away developers from the platform. At the time, Win 3.1 (aka Win16 API) had a much simpler API, albeit a much less powerful platform. Heck, another example of the value of simple APIs might have been Win16, since it did last for a long time and introduce a lot of programmers to WIMP programming.
Oddly, the Win32 API introduced by Windows NT echoed OS/2's complexity. CreateProcess still has 10 arguments! So how did it survive? Microsoft marketing, I guess. Or the complexity of the API had nothing to do with OS/2's demise....
My $.02
They want their bumper sticker and their lame joke back.
I called our OS/2 guru everytime it blew up. I called him twice in two years.
If I did that with Winders, the tech would come over here and shoot me.
Ahhh....Microfuckus COBOL running on OS/2. Now that is REAL code. You would actually watch the code being processed. Made you dizzy as Hell. It taught you to keep your procedures in sequential order.
We ran it on a IBM PS/2 Model 70 (386) with 8 meg of RAM. And you could run Kings Quest II on it as well. Is there a downside to this?
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
I wonder if anyone will take up eComStation / OS/2 and turn it into a handheld device OS... Looking at the review its definitely fast and stable, and scalable. There are still applications available and alternatives as well (the X server, for example). If ATMs run OS/2, why not handhelds? (Yes, there's a big gap in functionality but both require a good OS.)
There is no escape from The Muffin.
Well, that all depends on what you consider to be "native." I have not yet noticed Odin mentioned here, so I'm going to mention it now.
Does WinAmp count as native? RealPlayer? What about WinZip? Oh here's one, what about Microsoft Word 97, does that one count? Then there is also Starcraft and Quake 3. All of these run natively under OS/2. Though I admit, the games don't yet know how to take over the full screen under OS/2, they stay in a maximized window.
Odin is not an emulator. Odin is a binary converter. The people behind the project have been working very hard to bring the Win32 API set into the OS/2 environment. Think ala WINE, I guess. But unlike WINE, since OS/2 was the basis for the NT kernel, if memory serves, and it still is 100% DOS Compatible, and it already has a built in Windows 3.1 run time environment, once you convert Windows 32bit apps with Odin, they become OS/2 native. No need to load Odin each time.
Although, the website, and the developers will be the first to tell you that it's best to load the Odin run time converter each time, so those of you that dual boot into Windows proper will be able to use your binaries afterwards. If you go full conversion to OS/2 native route, they will not run under Windows any longer.
The only reason I even know about any of this, however, is that my company has a large amount of OS/2 driven server systems in production and everyday use. So everyonce in awhile I go hunt out nifty things to do with non-production machines before they go back to full time use.
*shrugs* Anyway, that's just my 2 cents worth of nothing.
"Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
I have a boxed set of OS/2 Warp Connect, and VA C++ Pro 4.0, but boy is documentation of the OS/2 API hard to come by. Not much on the web, either. If I wanted to write an app for OS/2, where the heck would I find any documentation, hints, FAQs, etc.?
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
The short story is I have no virii to worry about. OS/2 is basically impervious to them. I also use it for some of my web browsing.
I also have Win98, Win NT, and Linux machines on the network.
BTW, Linux is IMB's new OS/2.
It's about time, I still use OS/2 and it fills me with joy to know that somebody is still keeping it alive!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Anyone know how to add TCP/IP support to OS/2 Warp 3? I have a mint version that I'm going to install on an old 486 with 8MB of memory.
While I applaud Security Systems efforts to attempt to market this OS to the public
It is going to be difficult if people can't even remember that their name is Serenity Systems.
If a nasty bug appears in any of the code, IBM isn't likely to fix it, and I'd assume that OS/2 fixpaks won't work with this (last I heard, they were going to charge subscriptions to receive them, anyway).
From my understanding, a subscription to eCS with "Upgrade Protection" (?) gives you the right to receive a fixpack CD on a quarterly basis while IBM's Convenience Package sends only yearly CDs so it is better in this way. (You can also download them if you paid for the passwords).
I understand that Serenity aggregates OS/2 users so that they are another of the big customers that IBM pays attention to.
You are not guaranteed a fix anyway. But, unless you are Enormous-Grossebank Gmbh, this is your best chance to get IBM to listen to you.
with the danidasd freeware fat32 IFS driver - I forget who made it,
Daniela Engert, the name is a hint.
niche market for it.
I hope that not all the meanings of "niche" will be explored.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
The WPS was rock solid
I'd say that WPS is the least robust part of OS/2. OS2*.INI files get corrupted if you don't use costless third-party WPSTools regularly. And don't put too many shadows around.
But it also is the best part of OS/2. A pity.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
If you couldn't even get an OS/2 PC pre-installed from IBM's PC division,
I read somewhere that MS threatened to stop mass-discounting Windows to IBM. But I didn't heard about it being mentioned in the trial.
Can somebody confirm?
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
The point is not being "diskless" .. and it isn't a configuration for every user. But the key is the ability to manage and deploy software, and to create a reliable and available workstation. See http://www.os2ezine.com/v4n7/thinisin.htm
.. this is more like a PC which doesn't realize that its hard disk is not local. And that's the point. It works like and feels like a PC. Just a lot more reliable and less expensive to manage.
The point is not the cost of a disk. And this is not really "diskless"
Regards,
Bob St.John
Serenity Systems
First .. I appreciate the support .. but I want to make sure folks understand that Serenity Systems has an IBM OEM agreement, which means the product is supported by IBM (at least, the OS/2 components are). So, the IBM OS/2 defect support is completely engaged.
remember the tabs for the options? They were on the side and hideous
Since Warp 4 (1996?), they are on top and colourful. There are still applications with the old style though.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Gee ... why would you make so many incorrect statements? eCS includes support from IBM, including the ability to submit defect reports.
.. fixes for OS/2 and eCS specific fixes. At no charge .. no need for a subscription, as with IBM.
.. which are parts of the IBM installer. And the IBM installer is still available. Users can install from CD2 and that will engage the IBM installer and create the "OS/2 classic" desktop. Using the CD1 install creates the updated desktop, or use CD2 and the convert.exe program.
... which means a user would have to get Warp 4 and SWC. Warp 4 (upgrade) on IBM's site is around $180 .. new user is around $250 ... then add $200 or so for Software Choice. You are going to be up around $400 .. and all you get is OS/2 4.51.
.. things get dramatically better for eCS pricing as the eCS Entry will provide OS/2 4.52 for SRP $79 .. and even eCS Upgrade Protection, adding $89, only brings the cost to $168 ... well below the SWC price of $200 ... and new users would pay $199 and $89 for eCS compared to $250 and $200.
... eCS users get more software, including HOBLink X/11 Server which sells for about $200 .. IBM's Desktop on Call ...
.. but get it right. Valid criticism helps us improve the product.
You don't apply IBM Fixpacks directly because eCS builds the desktop differently. Therefore, Serenity Systems supplies its own fixpack which includes the IBM fixpack
eCS installer has been well received. Problem reports generally occur with the network install and selective install
Finally, it costs less than IBM. eCS uses OS/2 4.51
Next year
And
Feel free to criticize eCS
Shoddy remarks like this are just FUD.
Regards,
Bob St.John
Serenity Systems
...and it's a wonderful desktop operating system for my 64MB SCSI PPro.
Of course, I've been actively collecting software since that time (both native OS/2 stuff and older DOS and Windows 3.1 packages that work under WinOS2), so I have a much larger collection of working software than could easily be obtained today by a new OS/2 user (since many of the packages I use are no longer available through normal sources).
I find OS/2 plus 4OS2 (the JP Software OS/2 equivalent of 4DOS -- remember that?) to be a very nice command-line environment. I like it better than sh, bash, tcsh, zsh, or any other *nix shell I've been able to play with.
Also, OS/2's VDMs are much more robust than, say, DOSEMU, and much less resource-intensive than a Virtual PC or VMWare virtual machine, so they are a fairly nice (and lightweight) way to run DOS games and multimedia apps like QuickView (a DOS AVI/MPG player) and DAMP (a DOS MP3 player that does shifting/pulsating graphics while the music is playing).
It all depends on what you're used to and on what you want to do. I admit it's a lot easier to have stayed with OS/2 then it is to get into it now, since I've already paid the price of admission long ago...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
(1) It came with some useful software bundled (HobLink's X11 server and Lotus SmartSuite were the two biggies for me).
(2) It provided me with a chance to get an SMP kernel in the client version (IBM doesn't offer that, and Warp Server is *expensive*).
(3) It integrated all of the FixPaks into a single place. I didn't have to go through the somersaults to install them myself.
(4) It gives me an advocate (in Serenity Systems) that has some clout with IBM. Not a lot of clout, I suspect, but certainly more than I had by myself as a Warp 4 user.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I have been running eComStation since the preview and it kicks *ss. I used Warp 3 back in 1995, and always regarded it as one of the best operating systems ever. I switched to Linux, BSD and many other OSes, now I am back running eComStation primarily and I rarely need to boot another OS. IMHO OS/2 has one of the best Pascal environments ever (Virtual Pascal), Watcom C++ is available for free and there are many other good development environments and compilers, like Canterbury Modula-2.
eComStation includes two major office suites: Lotus Smartsuite and StarOffice. I use Smarsuite for my philosophy study at the university and other things. Injoy makes NAT a breeze compared to Linux and BSD (it is just a matter of one checkbutton) and eCS includes a good firewall tool (Zampa). Besides all that it has OS/2 (16-bit/32-bit), DOS and Win3.x executable support and Win32 support throught Odin. At the beginning of 2002 we can run most OSes under eComStation using the seperately available Virtual PC and I haven't mentioned HobLink/X11.
Combine this with smooth multithreading, a highly customizable desktop environment, good support for FAT, HPFS and JFS, all packed in one operating system. eCS offers what I need, and it is a good buy considering the amount of software included with eComStation.
I often hear people claiming OS/2 is a dead operating system. Fine why are there a bunch of new upgrades available for eComStation customers? Yes, most of them are from IBM. Customers with upgrade protection get even more new features, for example I can download the IBM branded Mozilla browser (with Flash) right now, and (afair) UP customers get new eCS versions (during their subscription period), which is very cool with eCS 1.1 (based on MCP2) is on the horizon (it will probably be released somewhere in 2002). UP is a good buy for me, considering the couple of hundred dollars I used to spend on Linux distributions.
Grtz, danieldk
With IBM's full-fledged support of Linux I'd like to see them come out with an OS/2 Window Manager.
Maybe your post was overrated. So what? Post again.
Hi. If you're reading this, then well... I have no idea what for. My posts aren't really that interesting.
And, since your post had been modded Interesting, it had to be Overrated, per your own instructions. QED!