The same discussion we have with MS-Windows users, that mostly is unable to comprehend that some people actually dare to use another system.
I totally fell in love with the GUI back in 1992, the object orientation you get from the WorkplaceShell and Presentation Manager Shellcombination is divine. KDE3 is fine, but the only place I really-really feel at home is on my eComStation Desktop.
Jave and XML is also supported on OS/2, why should anybody choose any other system ??
Also other compagnies like Microsoft has licenses and patents tied into OS/2. I'll bet Billy-boy still remebers the sleepless nights back at the OS/2 Warp 3.0 days...
The target has most likely been changed from x86-32 to x86-64. The Hammer is extremely cheap even if AMD set the prise higher than they promised this spring (In the neighborhood of the Athlon).... going for the IA64 could double the price of a Mac, IMO they pricey enough.
The development of the PPC for Desktop has been cancelled severel times....What should Apple do if that became permanent, go for the Alpha or PA-RISC or perhaps the cheaper but continously developed x86 ??
Their fabs might not be state of the art but there's nothing wrong with their fabs. The problem is, that also is the case for the current IBM PowerPC implementation, that PowerPC for embedded purposes is a pure goldmine, while for desktop purposes there's only one major costumer - Apple.
The resulat is that IBM almost has killed their implementation of the Desktop PPC.
MC is not much better, the development forces has for quite a few years been kept at a minimum, the development team has actually been disbanded for a short period -before MC got the idea of going 64-bit (The PReP is 64-bit with a 32-bit subset).
Disagreements, dislike, fights and hostility has been a part of the IBM/MC/Apple Alliance and now it seems like IBM is trying to eliminate MC with this new 64-bit PPC scheme. But then the G5 is about a year late, you could say that MC has had their shot at it.
Well, there's still some discussion regarding how LSB compliant Redhat really is and will be - I too have many doubts, mostly because it would mean that Redhat freely should give away a monopoly-like status... something they cannot afford.
SuSE/UL is at the moment the only "nearly true" LSB compliant distribution... The apparent domination of Redhat is not the problem. The problem is that most RPM-packages has Redhat path's "hardcoded" into the install-script....often making it impossible to avoid compiling programs/libs and so on, if you're using a non-Redhat based distribution... it is a huge problem for new users.... hundreds of hours has been used for making the distribution user-friendly and you find out that only the bundled packages is totally problem-free... it does not sound wise to me.
Take a look at http://www.yellowtab.com/ It seems like they haven't quite given up yet...but any possible future "BeOS" will be based on the Linux kernel...which is not such a bad thing! But no real P'n'P here I'm afraid!
No the average user does not have to deal with that, but some of the "normal" users do want to use some of the tools, for instance when running Java applications like the LimeWire Gnutella Client, they expect the foundation to work... Which actually means that threads like these is mor critical than ever, due to the amount of feedback...
I have a friend that believes that a computer should just work...she doesn't want and need to get all technical and - like - develop new software, and cannot understand that anybody else should, that anybody want to - Well, somebody has to get all technical and for instance develop new software, otherwise her computer wouldn't - just work - as she like it to....
I do not know how it is with the latest versions but the Solaris and MacOS versions used to only support a proper subset of the MSIE functionality. This means that many sites where/are written for a certain version of MSIE for Winodws, not for a certain version of MSIE for Windows/MacOS/Solaris.
It was an official statement I fell over a few years back, the plan is/was to migrate to Itanium.... the problem for MIPS is that SGI is almost the only costumer buying these wonderfull processors. The sales of MIPS processors for embedded devices is quite good....AMD Alchemy is also MIPS based (Current is MIPS 32, the next generation will be MIPS 64).
No INO PA-RISC is not transitioning into Itanium, HP did try that but the performance loss was not acceptable. What I think might happen is that PA-RISC is abruptly killed and Itanium replaces it directly.
MIPS is dead on the workstation/server scene, SGI went the Itanium way...MIPS is today almost only for embedded devices.
SUN is building SMT into a variant of the next US generation, used for Quad machines and bigger. But remember the strength of a SUN SPARC machine is not the processors, which hasn't been cutting edge for many years, but the big picture (Overall performance) - the machines are extremely well build.
But lately I've heard rumours about Compaq reconsidering the death of the Alpha - because of the possible future Itanium2 flop, even internal forces of the HP part of Compaq is reconsidering the death plans of PA-RISC.
Actually, what they want is to buy everything in the town....OS/2, OS/390, AIX,.... is all operating systems on the way out (They've ignored OS/2 since 1998 and tried to kill OS/2 since 2000....funny after 2000 it has gained much in popularity around the world)...they are to be replaced by reinforced Linux distributions and Windows.
Well I'll be off, have to install MySQL, Apache 2.0.35, the POP3/SMTP server Weasel, a WebMail thingie, OpenSSHD, Heathmon FTPD, Majordomo and perhaps I'll even enable NFS on my Warp Server.
And no they don't use OS/2 on any major machines and they never had...here AIX has been and is the OS, tomorrow it will be a reinforced Linux.
It won't - you'll get a black'n'white trap screen instead:o)
If you keep away from alpha and beta drivers, then it is quite stable. Also use the WarpZilla browser (Mozilla port) instead of the Netscape 4.61 (has an issue with the WPS)....
Like Linux it is quite frustrating when it freezes, because you know that the base system is working... the message queue is just stopped....
If it is an internal WPS problem then the WPS restarts automatically.
WPS = WorkPlace Shell = primary Shell (Like the XFree86 XServer)
PMShell = Presentation Manager Shell = Secondary GUI shell (Like the Window Manager of UNIX systems)
Absolutely... it is a wonderull system, that today technologywise has been caught up on, even surpassed by the latest KDE2 build that can do stuff that would mean a complete rewrite of some of the WPS and PMShell libraries.
It has survived multiple assasination attempts from both Redmond and IBM... IMO it has earned the respect, even though you might not want to give a commercial platform a go!
Actually OS/2 Warp 4.0 Merlin (1997) wasn't the last release...the last IBM release was last december, version 4.51 - featuring the new Warp Server 4.5 kernel.
IBM has changed the focus onto the business markey 100%, this means that you only are able to buy OS/2 today via a subscription...
There's a new release on its way this december:o)
The alternative is eComStation, based on the 4.51 base system - that was released a few months ago and a new release is planned next year!
An OS/2 version of Virtual PC is on its way and the partly WINE based Project Odin actually enables you to run many Win32 apps seamless.
There are millions of people out there - depending on OS/2 every day - and millions of people using it every day....
You can compare the X-server and the WPS...they are both the primary GUI-shells.
The PM (Secondary GUI shell) can be compare with shell's like the KDE (Is KDE the thertiary shell ??).
The Object Orientation (SOM) of the WPS should then the integrated in either the X-Server or the Window Manager (I think...I'm not really used to *NIX terms..I mean the layer between the Shell (KDE) and the XServer).
But it should be based on the current Linux CORBA implementation instead of the old IBM CORBA implementation, known as SOM. AFAIR SOM was abandoned in 1997 or 1998, in a beta stage of version 3 and given free. AFAIR it was also ported to AIX and Windows, in relation to the OpenDOC technology. This is why I do not believe IBM would do it. You are looking for something like the FreeOS project (Goal is to make an OpenSource version of OS/2, at first based on Linux technology)
Linux/*BSD is to frightening (Distributions like Mandrake and SuSE (well IMO is just as userfriendly as W2K..and you're able to change the default settings) for many people and that is the reason for them to use MS-Windows, though they're unsatisfied with its performance. What they need is an Operating System that has got the best of both worlds.
eCS/OS2 has got the best of both worlds....It is polished, yet versatile (I'm thinking of the WorkPlace Shell here)...stable, great performance and it has got power applications for most office-work. The Java support is superb, and actually some Win32 support is present (via Odin, which uses Open32 and a partly implementation of WINE for this job).
But it is not a gaming platform:o( That is a bit of a problem!
No, you're quite right...it wasn't lack of hardware support that killed OS/2....it is certain divisions inside IBM that is trying to kill OS/2....
But actually I have had little problems with hardware support...Even the GeForce2 is supported...the only area where there's a problem is with SCSI controllers (Funny since IBM for quite some time has been trying to push OS/2 into a server-role) and until recently soundcards (SBLive is now supported through a port of the OpenSource driver)...By this I mean, unless you want to use some exotic hardware, then there's no real problem finding hardware....
If PIV has a place in servers, then they should have made it for servers from the beginning, instead of gaming on uniprocessor GTL+ configurations.
BTW: AMD K7 processors are fully P6 compatible...what you've encountered is a chipset/Windows problem.
On any real server operating system there is very rare any problems at all.
AMD had kompability problems wich their pre K6/K5 processor, but that doesn't mean that they still have....wake up!
AMD and friends has focused on the consumer market, therefore there are no server mobo's available and that is why K7 haven't been SMP enabled.
And yes businesses will keep on buying Intel....because it is Intel, not because the technology is better or more reliable in any way.
And yes P3 will dissapear from the market...I'm not even sure that the 1.13Ghz P3 will ever reach the market.
Well if you're asked to cut down the largest tree in the forrest with a heering, then there is a problem.
Rambus has become a drag for Intel....which is why they're slowly migrating to DDR, even on the PIV platform. Then you'll be able to insert a decent amount of memory in the system....which you cannot with RAMBUS.
Intel is not dead in the home....I know of many people that rather than buy a cheaper 900Mhz Duron will buy a 733Mhz Celeron A...
The SOHO concept has been ereased from the IBM dictionary a long time ago.
Once again they are going for the software independent concept again (Last time they tried with the brilliant OpenDOC technology)...now it is JavaBeans+XML. Which means that it doesn't matter what OS you're using..as long as it supports JavaBeans....
The strategy announcement is saying that they will not continue to support the Warp 4...but it isn't saying anything about the Warp 4.5 (released last juli...featuring a new kernel, JFS and acouple of new API's)...and I hear an upgrade of this one is being developed...In march FP13 for Warp 4 was released...featuring the Warp 4.5 uniprocessor kernel (read: a kernel upgrade)...thereby changing the attention of the developers to this new 32-bit kernel....and it works the first driver with Kee support has arrived (The SBLive port)....
In the last 5 months....you've been forced to subscribe to Software Choice...if you want anything else but drivers and fixes...like the TCP/IP 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 packages...
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The same discussion we have with MS-Windows users, that mostly is unable to comprehend that some people actually dare to use another system.
I totally fell in love with the GUI back in 1992, the object orientation you get from the WorkplaceShell and Presentation Manager Shellcombination is divine.
KDE3 is fine, but the only place I really-really feel at home is on my eComStation Desktop.
Jave and XML is also supported on OS/2, why should anybody choose any other system ??
Remember the MAME hunt ?
Also other compagnies like Microsoft has licenses and patents tied into OS/2. I'll bet Billy-boy still remebers the sleepless nights back at the OS/2 Warp 3.0 days...
The target has most likely been changed from x86-32 to x86-64. .... going for the IA64 could double the price of a Mac, IMO they pricey enough.
The Hammer is extremely cheap even if AMD set the prise higher than they promised this spring (In the neighborhood of the Athlon)
The development of the PPC for Desktop has been cancelled severel times....What should Apple do if that became permanent, go for the Alpha or PA-RISC or perhaps the cheaper but continously developed x86 ??
Their fabs might not be state of the art but there's nothing wrong with their fabs. The problem is, that also is the case for the current IBM PowerPC implementation, that PowerPC for embedded purposes is a pure goldmine, while for desktop purposes there's only one major costumer - Apple.
The resulat is that IBM almost has killed their implementation of the Desktop PPC.
MC is not much better, the development forces has for quite a few years been kept at a minimum, the development team has actually been disbanded for a short period -before MC got the idea of going 64-bit (The PReP is 64-bit with a 32-bit subset).
Disagreements, dislike, fights and hostility has been a part of the IBM/MC/Apple Alliance and now it seems like IBM is trying to eliminate MC with this new 64-bit PPC scheme. But then the G5 is about a year late, you could say that MC has had their shot at it.
Well, there's still some discussion regarding how LSB compliant Redhat really is and will be - I too have many doubts, mostly because it would mean that Redhat freely should give away a monopoly-like status ... something they cannot afford.
... it is a huge problem for new users .... hundreds of hours has been used for making the distribution user-friendly and you find out that only the bundled packages is totally problem-free ... it does not sound wise to me.
SuSE/UL is at the moment the only "nearly true" LSB compliant distribution...
The apparent domination of Redhat is not the problem. The problem is that most RPM-packages has Redhat path's "hardcoded" into the install-script....often making it impossible to avoid compiling programs/libs and so on, if you're using a non-Redhat based distribution
Take a look at http://www.yellowtab.com/
It seems like they haven't quite given up yet...but any possible future "BeOS" will be based on the Linux kernel...which is not such a bad thing! But no real P'n'P here I'm afraid!
No the average user does not have to deal with that, but some of the "normal" users do want to use some of the tools, for instance when running Java applications like the LimeWire Gnutella Client, they expect the foundation to work ...
Which actually means that threads like these is mor critical than ever, due to the amount of feedback...
I have a friend that believes that a computer should just work...she doesn't want and need to get all technical and - like - develop new software, and cannot understand that anybody else should, that anybody want to - Well, somebody has to get all technical and for instance develop new software, otherwise her computer wouldn't - just work - as she like it to....
I do not know how it is with the latest versions but the Solaris and MacOS versions used to only support a proper subset of the MSIE functionality. This means that many sites where/are written for a certain version of MSIE for Winodws, not for a certain version of MSIE for Windows/MacOS/Solaris.
It was an official statement I fell over a few years back, the plan is/was to migrate to Itanium .... the problem for MIPS is that SGI is almost the only costumer buying these wonderfull processors.
The sales of MIPS processors for embedded devices is quite good....AMD Alchemy is also MIPS based (Current is MIPS 32, the next generation will be MIPS 64).
No INO PA-RISC is not transitioning into Itanium, HP did try that but the performance loss was not acceptable. What I think might happen is that PA-RISC is abruptly killed and Itanium replaces it directly.
MIPS is dead on the workstation/server scene, SGI went the Itanium way...MIPS is today almost only for embedded devices.
SUN is building SMT into a variant of the next US generation, used for Quad machines and bigger.
But remember the strength of a SUN SPARC machine is not the processors, which hasn't been cutting edge for many years, but the big picture (Overall performance) - the machines are extremely well build.
But lately I've heard rumours about Compaq reconsidering the death of the Alpha - because of the possible future Itanium2 flop, even internal forces of the HP part of Compaq is reconsidering the death plans of PA-RISC.
Actually, what they want is to buy everything in the town....OS/2, OS/390, AIX, .... is all operating systems on the way out (They've ignored OS/2 since 1998 and tried to kill OS/2 since 2000....funny after 2000 it has gained much in popularity around the world)...they are to be replaced by reinforced Linux distributions and Windows.
Well I'll be off, have to install MySQL, Apache 2.0.35, the POP3/SMTP server Weasel, a WebMail thingie, OpenSSHD, Heathmon FTPD, Majordomo and perhaps I'll even enable NFS on my Warp Server.
And no they don't use OS/2 on any major machines and they never had...here AIX has been and is the OS, tomorrow it will be a reinforced Linux.
QuakeII has been running on Odin for a couple of years!
Actually you can be forced to use ISS, if you plan on selling Remond products.
It was back in the old days - around Warp 3.0 or 4.0 (1995-1996) that happend. AFAIR it was mentioned in the first part of the trial
It won't - you'll get a black'n'white trap screen instead :o)
If you keep away from alpha and beta drivers, then it is quite stable. Also use the WarpZilla browser (Mozilla port) instead of the Netscape 4.61 (has an issue with the WPS)....
Like Linux it is quite frustrating when it freezes, because you know that the base system is working... the message queue is just stopped....
If it is an internal WPS problem then the WPS restarts automatically.
WPS = WorkPlace Shell = primary Shell (Like the XFree86 XServer)
PMShell = Presentation Manager Shell = Secondary GUI shell (Like the Window Manager of UNIX systems)
Absolutely ... it is a wonderull system, that today technologywise has been caught up on, even surpassed by the latest KDE2 build that can do stuff that would mean a complete rewrite of some of the WPS and PMShell libraries.
... IMO it has earned the respect, even though you might not want to give a commercial platform a go!
It has survived multiple assasination attempts from both Redmond and IBM
Actually OS/2 Warp 4.0 Merlin (1997) wasn't the last release...the last IBM release was last december, version 4.51 - featuring the new Warp Server 4.5 kernel.
:o)
IBM has changed the focus onto the business markey 100%, this means that you only are able to buy OS/2 today via a subscription...
There's a new release on its way this december
The alternative is eComStation, based on the 4.51 base system - that was released a few months ago and a new release is planned next year!
An OS/2 version of Virtual PC is on its way and the partly WINE based Project Odin actually enables you to run many Win32 apps seamless.
There are millions of people out there - depending on OS/2 every day - and millions of people using it every day....
You can compare the X-server and the WPS...they are both the primary GUI-shells.
The PM (Secondary GUI shell) can be compare with shell's like the KDE (Is KDE the thertiary shell ??).
The Object Orientation (SOM) of the WPS should then the integrated in either the X-Server or the Window Manager (I think...I'm not really used to *NIX terms..I mean the layer between the Shell (KDE) and the XServer).
But it should be based on the current Linux CORBA implementation instead of the old IBM CORBA implementation, known as SOM. AFAIR SOM was abandoned in 1997 or 1998, in a beta stage of version 3 and given free. AFAIR it was also ported to AIX and Windows, in relation to the OpenDOC technology. This is why I do not believe IBM would do it. You are looking for something like the FreeOS project (Goal is to make an OpenSource version of OS/2, at first based on Linux technology)
live long and prosper...
No actually eCS 1.0 = OS/2 Warp MCP 4.51, not 5.0. And nope, it is not P6 optimized, it uses the i486 instruction set.
Linux/*BSD is to frightening (Distributions like Mandrake and SuSE (well IMO is just as userfriendly as W2K..and you're able to change the default settings) for many people and that is the reason for them to use MS-Windows, though they're unsatisfied with its performance. What they need is an Operating System that has got the best of both worlds. :o( That is a bit of a problem!
eCS/OS2 has got the best of both worlds....It is polished, yet versatile (I'm thinking of the WorkPlace Shell here)...stable, great performance and it has got power applications for most office-work. The Java support is superb, and actually some Win32 support is present (via Odin, which uses Open32 and a partly implementation of WINE for this job).
But it is not a gaming platform
No, you're quite right...it wasn't lack of hardware support that killed OS/2....it is certain divisions inside IBM that is trying to kill OS/2....
But actually I have had little problems with hardware support...Even the GeForce2 is supported...the only area where there's a problem is with SCSI controllers (Funny since IBM for quite some time has been trying to push OS/2 into a server-role) and until recently soundcards (SBLive is now supported through a port of the OpenSource driver)...By this I mean, unless you want to use some exotic hardware, then there's no real problem finding hardware....
Live long and prosper...
If PIV has a place in servers, then they should have made it for servers from the beginning, instead of gaming on uniprocessor GTL+ configurations.
BTW: AMD K7 processors are fully P6 compatible...what you've encountered is a chipset/Windows problem.
On any real server operating system there is very rare any problems at all.
AMD had kompability problems wich their pre K6/K5 processor, but that doesn't mean that they still have....wake up!
AMD and friends has focused on the consumer market, therefore there are no server mobo's available and that is why K7 haven't been SMP enabled.
And yes businesses will keep on buying Intel....because it is Intel, not because the technology is better or more reliable in any way.
And yes P3 will dissapear from the market...I'm not even sure that the 1.13Ghz P3 will ever reach the market.
Well if you're asked to cut down the largest tree in the forrest with a heering, then there is a problem.
Rambus has become a drag for Intel....which is why they're slowly migrating to DDR, even on the PIV platform. Then you'll be able to insert a decent amount of memory in the system....which you cannot with RAMBUS.
Intel is not dead in the home....I know of many people that rather than buy a cheaper 900Mhz Duron will buy a 733Mhz Celeron A...
Well actually they are making some money on OS/2...last year approx 96mio $ (If my memory serves me right).
Another problem is the MS licenses..there are quite a few...
Basically nothing has changed!
The SOHO concept has been ereased from the IBM dictionary a long time ago.
Once again they are going for the software independent concept again (Last time they tried with the brilliant OpenDOC technology)...now it is JavaBeans+XML.
Which means that it doesn't matter what OS you're using..as long as it supports JavaBeans....
The strategy announcement is saying that they will not continue to support the Warp 4...but it isn't saying anything about the Warp 4.5 (released last juli...featuring a new kernel, JFS and acouple of new API's)...and I hear an upgrade of this one is being developed...In march FP13 for Warp 4 was released...featuring the Warp 4.5 uniprocessor kernel (read: a kernel upgrade)...thereby changing the attention of the developers to this new 32-bit kernel....and it works the first driver with Kee support has arrived (The SBLive port)....
In the last 5 months....you've been forced to subscribe to Software Choice...if you want anything else but drivers and fixes...like the TCP/IP 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 packages...