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eComStation 2.2 Beta, the Legacy of OS/2 Lives On

Posted by Unknown on from the ghost-of-systems-past dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Yes, those OS/2 Warp bastards just don't want to quit. Today the eComStation 2.2 beta live CD was released for public download. There is also this positive review from TechRepublic, and OS/2 Zelots partying/ranting at their community sites."

4 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Somehow OS/2 is the antitheses of HURD by Chrisq · · Score: 4, Funny

    HURD lives on in a half-life without ever being born. OS/2 lives on in a half-life without ever dying. You wonder why either of them still exist

    1. Re:Somehow OS/2 is the antitheses of HURD by CAIMLAS · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Those of us who do support on systems from many different clients really don't wonder why they still exist.

      HURD is one thing; we don't really wonder why it's stillborn. OS/2, or more specifically eComStation, is something else entirely. OS/2 has a history of commercial support, which means it's also got a history of applications with support. Support means that people used those applications, on the OS, in a business capacity. Think of OSes like: SCO, DOS, and yes, OS/2.

      Just because the OS, and application, support goes away doesn't mean those applications aren't still needed. There are a LOT of applications out there which were written one-off, for a single client in a specific role. The companies that wrote them may not even be in business anymore, but the application still works and the the cost of

      So people are running their applications on legacy operating systems, sometimes on some pretty janky hardware (I once saw an old box with IDE controllers on a proprietary IDE RAID controller - with half the RAID consisting of CF cards on adapters). Maybe they've managed to virtualize the platform, or partially virtualize it (such as when there's a hardware platform to the application, requiring COM port bridging to the guest so that a USB to COM adapter can be used to interface with a proprietary reader/etc. - you get the point).

      No, it's not an ideal business scenario, and there are certainly situations where a lot can go wrong, ruining your day. But There are a lot of these companies, which means there's a special use case for support. Or just in-house people needing to upgrade things to keep as much of their stack compatible as they can.

      So yeah, there is still a need for such legacy platforms. Just because it's not shiney and new doesn't mean it's lacking a valid business case.

      --
      ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
  2. For those who don't get it ... by MacTO · · Score: 4, Insightful

    OS/2 was used by major corporations back in the day. Even though most of those installations have been replaced with Windows, a few of them remain because: the cost of replacing custom or specialized software can be quite high, and the cost of replacing equipment that is currently in service can be quite high. Serenity Systems (the people who maintain eCS) was created to service these installations.

    A nice benefit is that OS/2 remains (moderately) updated for other users.

  3. Re:A reminder... by RabidReindeer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is a good reminder of why Microsoft should never be trusted. Ever.
    OS/2 was gaining significant ground and (in theory) could have been *Linux* today.
    OS/2 was very advanced at the time.
    Excepting, MS paid off IBM to kill it so it wouldn't interfere with their race to the desktop.
    No jail time, no DoJ investigation; nothing...

    Let's see how well secure boot works.

    Actually, OS/2 and Linux co-existed side-by-side in the 1990s and one of the most frustrating things was that it was easier to get free Linux support from open-source resources than it was to get paid OS/2 support from one of the largest companies in the world. And we had 2 multi-CPU IBM mainframes at the time, which should have counted for something. As it was, every time we finally found someone in IBM who could help us, they ended up leaving IBM shortly thereafter, and us without support.

    OS/2 support sucked. The IBM program products all used different and incompatible preferences and logfile formats, typically only readable by a proprietary IBM program; compare to Linux where the preferences and logs were/are in text files (and thus processable by text utilities) and in well-defined, consistent locations.

    Yes, OS/2 had some worthwhile features, but in the end, they weren't enough, especially with Microsoft patting them on the back with knife in hand. Windows contains some of the same horribleness that OS/2 did, but less of it, and that made a lot of difference.