Author Topic: Mobile OS/2 kernel for ARM-based devices  (Read 4149 times)

RickCHodgin

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Mobile OS/2 kernel for ARM-based devices
« on: June 02, 2017, 04:43:28 pm »
Has anyone ever considered creating a mobile OS/2 version?

Is there any work in that area?  I can see the need for a new Presentation Manager, one that is backward compatible but revamps the presentation from its native form to a mobile display.  I have created a concept for my Visual FreePro language called mashing.  You take a standard form that looks like whatever it looks like, and then run a mash on top of it.  The mash can re-colorize, re-scale, substitute text, add a new appearance, or just do a copy-and-paste re-arrange of the original content.

The mash presentation algorithms trap keyboard and mouse events properly and send them to the correct handler in the original form below, only that upper surface visible layer exists for UI in the mash.

Maybe something like that would be doable, as a Presentation Manager Mash layer that would allow users to create the mashes whenever a screen is displayed, completely independent of any changes to the underlying OS/2 software.

I have a lot of ideas, and a lot of skills and abilities.  I do not have resources or funds to work on these projects as I desire to.  If anyone knows how I can get funding to complete these projects, I would be willing to work full-time on them.

Thank you,
Rick C. Hodgin

Eric

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Re: Mobile OS/2 kernel for ARM-based devices
« Reply #1 on: June 03, 2017, 03:36:57 am »
The source to the OS/2 kernel (and the rest of OS/2) is locked away in IBM somewhere, so it cannot be modified or recompiled for ARM devices.  This means a total rewrite of the kernel.  There were projects like osFree to try and do stuff like this (for x86), but they haven't gotten a completed product out of it.  osFree's wiki also links to "competing" products that are trying to redo parts of OS/2, so you can check those out too.

Basically you likely want to get it working on x86 before porting it to ARM.