ArcaOS Wishlist - 6 months !!

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

I spitted the subject to "Large Floppy Support Discussion - USBMSD.ADD" seems there is required further discussion to clear some concepts.

Let's focus on the wishlist for ArcaOS.

It seems there was also some shift on the discussion that a different File System support might be also part of the wishlist.

Regards

[Martin Iturbide]

But: as it turns out ArcaOS is getting more and more closed source, so - even if these Drivers will be available those may be only licensed for ArcaOS I fear - may be not.

Actually, that isn't entirely true. Arca Noae is adding value (sometimes by removing unproven, unstable , or legally questionable, features from some things) to most of their drivers etc. and they are building them, with some support available. Those drivers are available, for all "current" versions of OS/2 (warp 4, and up, AFAIK). through subscriptions. The base code is shared with the open source repositories, when it is possible to do it, but somebody else needs to build, and support, that code. I think the Arca Noae build system is kept private, and probably has patches etc. that public sources won't have. When you purchase a subscription, you support Arca Noae in making better drivers (and other things).

Hi Doug

I found an exception here. The OS2AHCI driver used to be completely open source (GNU GPL V2) and now the latest versions includes David's Drv32, which the binaries may be freeware but the source code is contaminated by the IBM DDK license (can not be made public).

They may have their reasons that with David's Drv32 they can do interesting things (but I haven't noticed that on OS2AHCI), but it is step back in a driver that used to be 100% open source software.

---

Everybody, keep posting our wishlist about ArcaOS. It seems to me that  the "Sound Driver" is starting to get a higher priority on the community wishlist.

Regards

[Andreas Schnellbacher]

They may have their reasons that with David's Drv32 they can do interesting things (but I haven't noticed that on OS2AHCI), but it is step back in a driver that used to be 100% open source software.

Martin, you argue as if we would have an alternative. IMO if there were one, we could start to think about ideas like that. Don't forget that we are all happy that David does driver development - and he does it well.

Which OS/2 driver is 100 % OSS? Is that possible at all?

[Martin Iturbide]

Don't forget that we are all happy that David does driver development - and he does it well.

Should I just shut my mouth and be happy?

Don't get me wrong but I don't want to repeat the old story when users were not happy with Mensys and eComStation and there was a reply saying "You should shut up and be grateful because they are the ones keeping OS/2 alive". The idea of a community is that people can have their opinion and express it freely.  I'm guessing that Arca Noae and the user community are mature enough to get constructive criticism and fell free to express their point of view.

The fact is that I don't like putting a proprietary library on which used to be an open source working driver. That can be see as vendor locking with private source code, instead of "locking" the customer with good service.

Regards.

[Doug Bissett]

They may have their reasons that with David's Drv32 they can do interesting things (but I haven't noticed that on OS2AHCI), but it is step back in a driver that used to be 100% open source software.

David's DRV32 is available, if you look for it. The IBM DDK is not available AFAIK, and anybody who has it is bound by the IBM license.

I'm guessing that Arca Noae and the user community are mature enough to get constructive criticism and fell free to express their point of view.

I don't speak for Arca Noae, but it is my view that they have started a project to continue OS/2 into the future. They cannot do that without financial support, and they do a LOT of work to make it happen. There is nothing wrong with charging to build drivers, etc., and that is exactly what they are doing. Plus, they support their work to the best of their abilities (and their abilities are incredible). If you wish to do that for free, by all means do so. You might find that it isn't as easy as you might think. AFAIK, the source is being made available for all open source software. Whether you can build the drivers yourself may depend on a lot of things.

[Sigurd Fastenrath]

The IBM DDK is not available AFAIK

You mean this here? : https://archive.org/download/IBMDDKit2004

I don't speak for Arca Noae, ....

   .....

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

Like I said before, even that DRV32 is freeware, it's source code it still govern by the IBM DDK license. It has been used to add (I don't know which) functionality to the AHCI driver. What I would consider something better, is that DRV32 source code became a netlabs close source project just like Lars has done with the USB drivers, so Netlabs can also share the ownership of it to have a chance that if 5 or 10 years David no longer wants to work on DRV32, it can be switched to other developer. With that DRV32 will still respect the IBM DDK license and there will be change to don't get "lock".
 
Regards

[Roderick Klein]

But: as it turns out ArcaOS is getting more and more closed source, so - even if these Drivers will be available those may be only licensed for ArcaOS I fear - may be not.

Actually, that isn't entirely true. Arca Noae is adding value (sometimes by removing unproven, unstable , or legally questionable, features from some things) to most of their drivers etc. and they are building them, with some support available. Those drivers are available, for all "current" versions of OS/2 (warp 4, and up, AFAIK). through subscriptions. The base code is shared with the open source repositories, when it is possible to do it, but somebody else needs to build, and support, that code. I think the Arca Noae build system is kept private, and probably has patches etc. that public sources won't have. When you purchase a subscription, you support Arca Noae in making better drivers (and other things).

Hi Doug

I found an exception here. The OS2AHCI driver used to be completely open source (GNU GPL V2) and now the latest versions includes David's Drv32, which the binaries may be freeware but the source code is contaminated by the IBM DDK license (can not be made public).

They may have their reasons that with David's Drv32 they can do interesting things (but I haven't noticed that on OS2AHCI), but it is step back in a driver that used to be 100% open source software.

---

Everybody, keep posting our wishlist about ArcaOS. It seems to me that  the "Sound Driver" is starting to get a higher priority on the community wishlist.

Regards

I think I invited people to checkout David his presentation from Warpstock Toronto 2017.
They are working on USB 3.0 and an audio drivers is in the works to replace UNIAUD.
Look up the video on youtube in which he explains it in more detail.

Roderick

[David Graser]

Yes, USB is necessary since most usb devices are now 3.0.  I am wondering about the encryption that these devices demand that you do.  Don't do the encryption and the drive is useless.  I was also wondering about WIFI.  This is something I have been waiting for a long time. 

David

[Doug Bissett]

Yes, USB is necessary since most usb devices are now 3.0.

No, USB  3 is not necessary. USB 3 devices will work with USB 2 cables, hubs, and controllers, at USB 2 speeds. However, a USB 3 driver is becoming much more important now that many new computers don't have USB 2 controllers. This is likely more important than WiFi.

I am wondering about the encryption that these devices demand that you do.  Don't do the encryption and the drive is useless.

The only device that I have seen with "so called" built in encryption was easily fixed. First, you probably want to use DFSEE to image the drive, so you can put it back to the way that you got it. Then, use DFSEE to wipe the front end of the disk. Now, it is just an empty USB device,waiting for you to put proper partitions on it, and format it. There may be something new, that I don't know about.

I was also wondering about WIFI.  This is something I have been waiting for a long time.

Yeah, WiFi is about 10 years over due. I do know that most of the project has been done, but other things are taking the developers time.

[Martin Iturbide]

Yes, USB is necessary since most usb devices are now 3.0.

No, USB  3 is not necessary. USB 3 devices will work with USB 2 cables, hubs, and controllers, at USB 2 speeds. However, a USB 3 driver is becoming much more important now that many new computers don't have USB 2 controllers. This is likely more important than WiFi.

Remember that people has their own priorities. I think that USB 3.0 is not necessary just because of the USB 3.0 devices, it is necessary because there are machines that comes without CD and with only USB 3.0 ports (with no USB 2.0 legacy option on the BIOS), so you can not install OS/2 or ArcaOS on that machines because of that. (Or you can take out the HDD and load the image, but the USB ports will be useless. ) And present laptops are going this way. I also remember that discussing this at Warpstock some guy said that USB 3.0 is more important than Wifi because of this. His priority was that OS/2 remains installable on machines and before of that it cames the wifi driver.

Regards

[Roderick Klein]

Yes, USB is necessary since most usb devices are now 3.0.

No, USB  3 is not necessary. USB 3 devices will work with USB 2 cables, hubs, and controllers, at USB 2 speeds. However, a USB 3 driver is becoming much more important now that many new computers don't have USB 2 controllers. This is likely more important than WiFi.

I am wondering about the encryption that these devices demand that you do.  Don't do the encryption and the drive is useless.

The only device that I have seen with "so called" built in encryption was easily fixed. First, you probably want to use DFSEE to image the drive, so you can put it back to the way that you got it. Then, use DFSEE to wipe the front end of the disk. Now, it is just an empty USB device,waiting for you to put proper partitions on it, and format it. There may be something new, that I don't know about.

I was also wondering about WIFI.  This is something I have been waiting for a long time.

Yeah, WiFi is about 10 years over due. I do know that most of the project has been done, but other things are taking the developers time.

Having worked on this project with David at Mensys at the time the Wifi driver project got a mayor blow by the LInux guys making changes of some kind. It made updating of the E1000E driver that is hosted at Netlabs just about impossible. Basically from what I can tell from the presentation from David at Warpstock is that Arca Noae has library that is used to compile FreeBSD sources.  That is how they created the new NIC drivers.
That is what put the WiFi drivers on hold.

For the same reason UNIAUD based on Alsa seems to be RIP.  They made to made changes to the Alsa code. David mentioned they are working on a FreeBSD audio driver.

Roderick

[Roderick Klein]

Hi

Like I said before, even that DRV32 is freeware, it's source code it still govern by the IBM DDK license. It has been used to add (I don't know which) functionality to the AHCI driver. What I would consider something better, is that DRV32 source code became a netlabs close source project just like Lars has done with the USB drivers, so Netlabs can also share the ownership of it to have a chance that if 5 or 10 years David no longer wants to work on DRV32, it can be switched to other developer. With that DRV32 will still respect the IBM DDK license and there will be change to don't get "lock".
 
Regards

While I really happy with the work you Martin are doing and have been doing to collect API documentation and source code for drivers and applications.  I think its possibly time for a new strategy. What can be done with all of this source code ? As a community we can try to collect more source code. But the vast majority of work is not being done by the community. I can understand why that its happening as writing device drivers is a time consuming job.
While I can understand that you are not happy with the DRV32 library...

Practically speaking who is working on drivers for example ? And I do not think we need even more examples as Netlabs and hobbes has tons of driver sources stored already. Also checkin into SVN at Netlabs with revision history so people can see what and why was modified. When do we have enough source code ?

Roderick

[ivan]

Yes, USB is necessary since most usb devices are now 3.0.

No, USB  3 is not necessary. USB 3 devices will work with USB 2 cables, hubs, and controllers, at USB 2 speeds. However, a USB 3 driver is becoming much more important now that many new computers don't have USB 2 controllers. This is likely more important than WiFi.

Remember that people has their own priorities. I think that USB 3.0 is not necessary just because of the USB 3.0 devices, it is necessary because there are machines that comes without CD and with only USB 3.0 ports (with no USB 2.0 legacy option on the BIOS), so you can not install OS/2 or ArcaOS on that machines because of that. (Or you can take out the HDD and load the image, but the USB ports will be useless. ) And present laptops are going this way. I also remember that discussing this at Warpstock some guy said that USB 3.0 is more important than Wifi because of this. His priority was that OS/2 remains installable on machines and before of that it cames the wifi driver.

Regards

I couldn't agree more Martin.

There used to be workrounds for the odd motherboard problems  but with the current crop of boards we have to be even more selective.  A lot of them are using the ASMedia chip for USB (mainly 3 but also some 2) and the documentation specifically says that it won't work with OS/2. (Linux has managed to get a partial workround) which makes more than 50% of modern boards useless.

There are also problems with usb on the AMD Ryzen support chipsets even though they are supposed to support usb 2 as well as 3 but for some reason they don't work with our usb drivers so the two boards I have just run Linux rather than my preferred OS/2 (ArcaOS).
 

[Roderick Klein]

We have Lars Erdmann and Wim Brul working on the UBSMSD and USB audio driver.
Other then that not much driver development is being done by the community (Or did I miss anybody). As I typed before I can understand why, writing drivers is not an easy task and its timing consuming. Especially when it comes to debugging drivers then run into trouble.

What I think would be great is if we can see if we can some more development going again.  From what I can tell developers such as BWW already get very little feedback and Lars I think also does not get that much amount of feedback. Hence my other reason why I think at certain moment you have enough source code as community and see what we can do with that source code. As in put it to good use.

One thing I think that would be great community project is to use the Arca Noae ACPI toolkit and see if we can create a tool that can

* Warn when your battery runs low on your laptop. I miss that Thinkpad feature and I do no get an audio beep.

* A tool that dim the backlight of your LCD screen when you are running on battery power. Doing this is laptop depended but might be possible in some cases via ACPI or in some cases via the VESA BIOS. It could dramticly extend the battery live of your laptop.

Just one idea. on how to keep OS/2 really useable so people stick with the platform. Then it also makes more sense to talk about a full blown OS/2 open source replacement. You need a go in between if such a project even has a fighting chance. The above is just one example of what we could do to try and improve the useability of OS/2.

Roderick