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Messages - Roderick Klein

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181
Applications / Re: Test build of dooble with qt5
« on: April 24, 2022, 10:48:31 pm »
Hey guys,

I'm many have read posts of a build of dooble existing and is waiting on an rpm.

I couldn't understand why a zip wasn't being provided, so I spent a little bit of time this morning building it myself, the result is https://smedley.id.au/tmp/dooble-2022.04.04-os2-20220424.zip

Note I've had the browser close on me a few times, no idea yet if these are dooble or Qt5 related. There is nothing in popuplog.os2  not in the exceptq folder

edit: I would like to add that this wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for the work that Dmitry has put into the port of Qt5.

Enjoy!

Cheers,

Paul

The rpm for dooble is now on rpm. Netlabs. Org exp and will be moved to
production as we speak.

The rpm was created so all depencies are done correctly.

Roderick

182
Internet / Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
« on: April 17, 2022, 09:28:47 am »
Hi Dmitry,

Glad to hear you made it  out of Russia and that you're safe.

I appreciate your post  and update. My comment about 'doesn't smell right' was specifically in relation to Roderick's last update, where he implies that 'others' were behind the switch to Dooble -  you now seems to have confirmed that you/bww chose  to switch to Dooble.  I'm not sure why Roderick was so unclear. Or perhapsI misread and the development is done by bww and the rpm  by  volunteers?

In relation to "updates having «little to do with the browser»."  I'm clearly not talking about toolchain updates - there have been plenty of non-toolchain updates in recent bww updates (libusb, libuvc as examples  from the most recent bww update).

The fundamental issue is the lack of transparency.  Why not be clear  where things stand? If you read Roderick's post, the browser has been coming in a few weeks for what seems like years  now.  Your post actually sets out some of the technical limitations blocking progress.

Cheers,

Paul

A lot of the reasons for the delay and some of these technicall blocking limitations where described in the browser updates on https://articles.os2voice.org did you read these over time ?

The Dooble browser was compiled by Elbert Pol orginally. After Dmitry had to get out of Russia I talked to Dmitry via Telegram app to consider doing a RPM file for the Dooble Browser. Gregg Young started working on the RPM package. The text of the last posting I send out was not clear., but the Dooble RPM was discussed with Dmitry. At the time the message was send out it was unclear WHEN Dmitry would be able to do ANY work on Otter or OS/2 even...

He is currently (as time permits) working on the Dooble RPM package. As everbody now understands he a lot of stuff to deal with after he left Russia.

Roderick


183
Internet / Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
« on: April 17, 2022, 09:12:21 am »
Hey Roderick,

I did send out a news message via OS/2 VOICE why the browser was delayed. Its because of the events surrounding Ukraine. Dmitry has not been able to work on the browser for close to 6 weeks.

With the greatest  of respect  - if this latest  delay was the first that had been seen,  I don't think anyone would be complaining.

Remember that in November *2020* we heard  that builds were in the hands of beta testers -  yet almost 18 months later there seems to have been little progress beyond this; let alone the original roadmap from April *2018* (4 years ago) that documented an 18 month road  map.

Cheers,

Paul

Well I provide the newsletter updates on https://articles.os2voice.org where Dmitry and I explained why the project was delayed.
All the newsletters where written by me and reviewed by Dmitry.  With the help of Martin these updates where also refered to on the main page os2world.com.

Roderick

184
Internet / Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
« on: April 15, 2022, 03:29:48 pm »
Isn't Dimitry located in Russia? I always assumed so but don't actually know, but if so, there's a war along with all kinds of sanctions making doing any kind of business between Russia and the west much harder.
As for the browser, it always seemed pretty ambitious but there are very few choices left and all the choices are now becoming 64 bit, besides being fast moving targets and as Martin mentioned, we have a shortage of knowledgeable developers.
As mentioned, QT5 seems almost dead, though there is https://invent.kde.org/qt/qt consisting of backported patches from QT6 as it seems QT6 is no where near ready.
QT5 itself seems barely buildable on OS/2, here the OS crashes when trying to link I think, somewhat surprising as previous experience shows lack of memory causing wlink to die with a lack of spill memory error.
As the browsers that have been tried have not been broadly released nor their source, it is hard to say what the problems are. I have the Simplebrowser running somewhat stably here. Dooble itself seems to have died and been resurrected. It targets QT6 but does seem like it also supports QT 5.12 or newer. I tried building it, the build dies instantly as our build system doesn't understand the versionAtleast function/macro and other then the readme, no work has been done on the github code. Quite likely that there are private source trees where work is happening.
It's all opaque with most of the recent work being done by Silvan on a volunteer basis and others working on USB stuff like Joystick and camera support. Meanwhile we have fewer and fewer users, especially users on bare metal.
As for projects, wasn't OpenOffice others besides dmik? Though that's getting on the old side now.

Yes Dmitry was located in Russia, until recently. But he has moved out recently...
I know 2 people that next to Dmitry can work with QT 5.12 and can compile it on there system.
So if you have an issue then describe how it fails ? Elbert Pole I think can compile QT 5.12 and possibly also Gregg Young.

I understood it correctly from Dmitry updates of QT 5.X is still supported another for QT webkit updates. Or maybe longer.

Roderick

185
Internet / Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
« on: April 15, 2022, 11:28:23 am »
I did send out a news message via OS/2 VOICE why the browser was delayed. Its because of the events surrounding Ukraine. Dmitry has not been able to work on the browser for close to 6 weeks. Another team of volunteers has worked on an RPM package that contains the Dooble browser.
This will use the latest port of the QT to OS/2. That RPM package is being build right now. That should be released this week or beginning next week in rpm.netlabs.org. A news item will be send out when its ready.

Best regards,

Roderick Klein
OS/2 VOICE

186
Internet / Re: Dooble works fine but does have some flaws
« on: April 05, 2022, 11:01:59 am »
As I stated a new RPM is being worked on by 2 people to be released via rpm.netlab.org which will be based on the new QT webkit engine...
Its taking somewhat longer to finish the RPM file and the SPEC file.


Roderick

187
Off Topic discussions / Re: Russia attacked Ukraine
« on: February 24, 2022, 11:14:45 pm »
See what the spokesman in the UN said from Kenia in 2 1/2 minutes video, its spot on:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fyOpp-rVv6A

Its good to look at the past and learn from it. But how long can be continue to hang onto the past ?
The human race has plenty of global challanges where we need to work toghether.

Roderick

188
Hi Roderick,
By the XUL browsers, they're mostly forks of Firefox, PaleMoon and friends that use the Goanna (forked Gecko from 52ESR) engine, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goanna_%28software%29 and of course SeaMonkey, and you're right, they have very little user base, probably less then 1%.
It's a crappy situation with Google controlling the standards it seems now, the only saving grace is Safari as Apple, especially their small devices is a market that can't be ignored.
As for the funding, the subscription model should work as long as the QT folks support the QT5 Web stuff, afterwards, who knows.

There is rough estimate how long it would take to port QT 6 to OS/2. The big chunk of work was going from 4.68 QT to the 5.12 version.
Why can QT6 not be ported to OS/2 ?

Roderick Klein

189
Quote
Two Dutch OS/2 users reported recently that https://mijn.ing.nl/login/ no longer works.
Make that three. It happened in december last year and I had to make up my mind on what to do. Must I buy a smartphone, laptop, desktop and learn how to operate that? Which one? What operating system? All my systems are OS/2 based. It is all I know. No linux, Mac, Windows. Bills and taxes had to be paid! So after searching the internet and making up my mind I ended up buying a windows 11 laptop at the local computer shop.       

Open a ticket at AN.

Roderick Klein

190
Hi Ivan, playing with it on Linux, it is not very configurable, currently has no support for extensions though I believe support is planned and comes with its own ad blocker which seems to work. Not sure about tab re-positioning, at least they're along the top like our current browsers.

Hi Dariusz, we don't all have a spare Windows or Linux machine to use. As for funding, I don't think there are any big fish who care about having a browser left besides Arca Noae and I had the impression they and Bitwise don't get along as well as they used to, not that I really know.
I fully expect a lot of people will continue to use the Mozilla browsers along side the new one, perhaps eventually fully migrating, perhaps not. Still need to do email etc too.

Hi Roderick, unluckily we'll be back to not being supported on a lot of sites due to the speed of Browser development and can't even fall back to work arounds in add-ons like the XUL based browsers are doing. The XUL based ones also have a larger user base to pressure sites like GitHub to revert changes that affects them like the recent chaining operator thing, which at least the Simple Browser gets a 4/5 for supporting.
Site showing compatibility, https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es2016plus/ which our old browsers fail badly, the Simple Browser does support up to 2020 JavaScript standards.
The continuing problem is crappy web developers who just plug in JS libraries, test on a couple of browsers and call it done instead of testing for features and having fall backs. We're supposed to update every month now a days
Hopefully the QT people keep supporting the QT5 web engine as it is hard to imagine the shrinking community being able to pay for porting current QT6

Hello Dave,

I know the Otter Browser will need updating over time. As I described in the newsletter 13 on articles.os2voice.org, the idea is a subscription model for the browser. This way we hope to raise more money so Dmitry from BWW can work on updates and new features. Such as possibly adding USB webcam support to the Otter Browser. I think the Open Office donation model is a good approach.

If have heard more complaints of web standards getting more and more complex. I can no longer find the URL, but the main developer
of Pale Moon complaint in a forum posting about the influence of Google. But if this trend can be stopped longterm, I doubt that.
I am afraid that Github is an isolated case where people got lucky. I hope I am wrong...

I do not understand you statement about XUL based browsers. It seems it has small marketshare.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share (about 4% marketshare, maybe slightly more).
I hope I am wrong, but I am afraid the XUL based browser will loose more influence in the web standards.
The big guys sadly decide what happens to web standards.

If you want to discuss it, I suggest to open another thread on os2world.com. You know my concern for long time.
That is that I do not know how long it will remain possible to backport fixes to the Mozilla suite that we have currently ?
Is it already not getting harder ?

There is a thread on os2.org I understand (in German) about people not being able to access certain banks in Germany.
Two Dutch OS/2 users reported recently that https://mijn.ing.nl/login/ no longer works. I am not saying you are not doing good work Dave.
But I have the impression it will get more and more difficult to keep up...

As for the funding. I know our community is getting smaller. I have tried to make an estimate how big our user base is.
I tried to base that on the IP addresses from rpm.netlabs.org. That was largely intended to get somewhat of an impression
how many people we have in the community.  Some people thought the numbers made no sense, but this is from what I remember.

Having worked on eCS for 10 years I can state I know a lot of customers do not visit the forums on frequent basis.
Keep an eye on articles.os2voice.org and how many people fill in the poll ? Right now at 60. 
My estimate is that we have a between few thousand *private* OS/2 users left, maybe closer more ?
Hard to say. As a lot of users do not come on the forums on a regulair basis!

I can not look into the future, the new browser is now close to getting over the finish line as public beta.
My estimate the community is big enough.

Roderick Klein

191
What was the reason why the Otter Browser was chosen in first place? The Qupzilla/Falkon browser is more frequently updated and has a larger user base. It has the same requirement for a current QT framework.

I will check Dmitry from Bitwise Works. But I seem to recall the Falkon browser would even be more work, because we need yet another library and would take more time to port.

Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE

192
ivan, everyone...

...If it won't do those things I will continue using Dave's Firefox ESR 38.8.0 on OS/2 or the Linux Firefox ESR via my KVM switch.

Here is what's been eating away at me: the funding drive, while generally a great and just effort, seems to be single handedly relying on us, the OS/2 end-users to cover the costs. So where are the big-fish of our platform in all of this? Does anyone know? Have those kind of conversations taken place and have any results been arrived at?

If you want to talk full-disclosure, well, let's "talk the talk, and walk the walk"...much easier to raise additional funds if we all understand the full playing field!

Hello Dariusz,

From my perspective nothing has changest since about 2012 when Bitwise Works was founded. A lot of funding
came from the community. Like with QT 4.68 at the time as Netlabs project a lot of people contributed to the
community.

When it comes to "big fish" you mean large companies ? In the 10 years I worked at Mensys on eCS (from about 2002 until 2013) not
a single large customer demanded browser support. 

So for me the fund raising is not that much different as it has been over the last 10 years.

Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE

193
I will try to answer to the best of abiilities your questions.

For your first question download the Otter Browser on Windows or Linux. Its effecitvely the same browser as on ArcaOS.
https://otter-browser.org/ most of the functions should be the same on ArcaOS. 

As for your second question I do not know.

Your third question ? Are you referring to the QT testbrowser that was distributed and mentioned by other people ?

As I mentioned this this working towards a first public beta. That is what the focus is on.
Otter was selected as the browser has been under development for a longer time already.
And while we try with this browser to satisfy as many users as possible, we can not make everybody happy.

The small group of beta testers indeed reported that websites that you could
no longer access on OS/2, now work again. And that is the primary goal of this project make as many websites accesiable again
on OS/2 and ArcaOS.

Thanks,

Roderick Klein

194
Hello,

The new Otter Browser has been tested by a small group of people.
The most important issues are now being fixed to provide a stable browser experience. Current expectation is that first *public* beta of Otter Browser will be released in the last week of February or the first week of March.

Installation of the new Otter Browser will only be supported via ANPM (Arca Noae Package Manager). When the public beta of the Otter Browser is released we will also release the instructions how to install the Otter Browser.

We need your donations to keep going, please consider making a donation via https://donation.os2voice.org

Please visit https://articles.os2voice.org , at the bottom of the Browser update 13 you can find 2 questions. Could you please fill in these two questions about your browser experience
on OS/2, eCS and ArcaOS ? Thank you!

In this newsletter you can also read why the Browser update newsletter have not been released over the last couple of months.

We also explain how the browser will distributed when
the beta cycle is finished.

You can also read how Steven Levine views the new Otter Browser.

Best regards,

Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE

195
Applications / Re: LIBC panic errors anyone?
« on: January 29, 2022, 03:58:08 pm »
Maybe they are simply not equivalent. What I read somewhere is that BWW recommends to switch over to "Pentium4" architecture in general (even updating already installed packages if possible).
And as much as I can tell, they stopped producing "i686" versions of their RPMs for everything that is new.

That is correct.

Roderick

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