What existing implimentations of OS/2 are there?

[Caluser2000]

I'm curious to know who still implements systems running OS/2 still to this day. Basicly I would like to get an idea how big the OS/2 user base is out there in the real world.

Older OSs are are a hobby of mine and a still have one system, a 486DX2/66 with 16megs of ram, running v3 Warp. It gets used from time to time for IRCing. I do have quite good collection of OS/2 versions from 1.3EE up to Warp 4 Advanced Server.

My prefered OS these days for day to day usage is Linux. It took a while but I am quite comfortable using it now. All of my hardware runs on it, including my wife wireless printer.

[Neil Waldhauer]

I run my OS/2 consulting business on OS/2, eCS and ArcaOS. Of those, only ArcaOS is actively developed. eCS is still available. Illegal copies of IBM OS/2 are floating around the internet. Some legal copies of older versions of OS/2 are still available on eBay.

As long as there are personal computers, I expect to run OS/2. As the world transitions away from personal computers, so do I.

The size of the OS/2 user base is unknown and difficult to discover. Neither Arca Noae, nor XEU has publicly disclosed their sales numbers.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

At OS2World I have approx 480 users registered since 2012. Not all of them are active, and some little percentage should be some spam users.

I asked Lewis (from Arca Noae) on a public chat he made some time ago. He didn't talk about number but he said a little bit about the industries where ArcaOS has been sold.

[02:18:50] <martini> Q: Lewis I always wondered which are the most common (or top 10) commercial use of ArcaOS (and OS/2) on these days. Without naming any specific customer can you tell us what kind of software are corporate customers running ArcaOS (Banking, Retail, etc)  ?
[02:19:06] <LewisR> Excellent question.
[02:19:22] <LewisR> Insurance, manufacturing (robotics controls)...
[02:19:42] <LewisR> and some point of sale systems.
[02:20:09] <LewisR> By far, insurance and manufacturing have been the most active clients for us.
[02:20:30] <martini> Any chance to offer ArcaOS on ATMs ? Was there any request?
[02:21:21] <LewisR> In terms of what software they are using, even in insurance, they are running a customized application, and these systems are isolated and away from the internet. No recent request for ATMs, yet, though we do have a lead on some used ATM dealers.
[02:21:55] <martini> Thanks.

Now that ArcaOS is one year old it can be interesting to ask the market size to Lewis.

Regards

[Joop]

I run eCS 1.2 as main system, can do things with this OS which are impossible on other OS systems. Running seamless OS/2, Win3.1, DOS. There are still very good DOS programs which do fly on today's systems. Need Win3.1 for some programs without any replacements.

[Caluser2000]

Thanks very much for your replies. It would make sense to not have legacy systems internet facing. I see eCS has a list of customers they've sold to.

Neil I've used your howto guides in the past. I still have the hdd out of my old OS/2 v4 box. The "Cloud" seems to be the big thing these days.

Martin good for you keeping the forums going.

Joop nice to see. I guess you can run OS/2 variants in a virtual machine if need be.

My wife has a Windows 10 laptop. I find the UI quite clumbersome in many regards. Much prefered the way XP worked over it.

[Doug Bissett]

I see eCS has a list of customers they've sold to.

Only the ones who permitted it (probably less than 10 % of them).

The "Cloud" seems to be the big thing these days.

The "cloud" is quickly becoming a major problem. It makes it easy for those who run the servers to spy on what you are doing. If you think that Facebook is a problem, you aren't paying attention to the "cloud". Personally, I wouldn't put anything out there. You never know what will be done with it.

My wife has a Windows 10 laptop. I find the UI quite clumbersome in many regards. Much prefered the way XP worked over it.

Look in ALL of the settings, and turn off anything that doesn't make sense (about 90% of it), and NEVER sign in to the windows servers (including the "cloud"). Win 10 will work much better (much better than winXP, today, which is pretty much obsolete).

[Caluser2000]

I've already done some tweeking of Win 10 to help make things easier. I just hope a major update doesn't reverse those settings.

As with XP being obsolete, that doesn't bother me too much. Still have one P4 system with XP still on. Its useful for casual browsing. I do use Linux, Devuan Jessie(Debian kernal), on my daily driver though and its running on a Celeron 2.8GHz system. Putting old hardware to good use is a hobby of mine. It cost nothing to set up just a bit of time. Certainly easier than any Windows fresh install. The Devuan forum is very helpful.

As for the"cloud" I could'nt agree more. I don't use it for those very reasons you stated.

[Dave Yeo]

The "cloud" is handy for stuff that you want to share anyways, such as GPL code.

[Joop]

Joop nice to see. I guess you can run OS/2 variants in a virtual machine if need be.

For what reason? I run eCS 1.2 Dutch, thats it. OS/2 is backwards compatible as long as its version is 2.11 (2.xx?) or higher. Some DOS programs wants the whole machine, I run those in DosBox. Windows 3.11 no problem as long as it is Windows 3.x ;-). Have several Java versions next to each other for testing purposes, it doesn't bite so to speak.

[Caluser2000]

I have a number of older systems. A 386DX25 runs Dos/Win3.1 and a few 486s.

What are your OS/2 system specifications Joop? Any major issues setting it up at all?

Actually I'm curious as to what other members are running as well.

[Caluser2000]

The "cloud" is handy for stuff that you want to share anyways, such as GPL code.

Thats a very good point. I wouln't trust any personal information there though.

[Doug Bissett]

I just hope a major update doesn't reverse those settings.

Best to go through them occasionally. Sometimes, they introduce new settings, that override old settings. Don't trust windows to respect your privacy.

Actually I'm curious as to what other members are running as well.

My oldest machine is an IBM ThinkPad A22e, maxed out at 256 meg of memory, and a 30 GB HDD. It still has Win98 on it, but I haven't even bothered to boot it for many years. ArcaOS 5.0.2 works well, as long as I don't try to run any memory hogs. They do work, but it takes about 40 minutes just to get to the default Firefox (38.8.0 I think) home page. The disk is, of course going at full speed, paging.

Next, I have an old P4, that I use as an ArcaOS 5.0.2 based NAS box. I added a SATA adapter, and a 2 GB HDD, and it just sits there, under the basement stairs, and runs.

Two Lenovo ThinkPads. T510 and L530, which work well with ArcaOS 5.0.2.

I have three Asus M3A78-EM machines. Two with tri core processors, and one with a quad core processor. One of the tri core machines is loaned to a friend who runs XP. My brother uses the other tri core (currently ArcaOS 5.0), and I use the quad core as a test machine.

My main machine is an Asus A88XM-A, with A6 processor. It has a lot more software on it, than the others, and it runs well with ArcaOS 5.0.2. The main problem is to manage how much lower shared memory gets used, but that is a problem with all versions of OS/2.

There are three others (two DELL, and one HP), that I use for testing. They all work, but there are problems (mostly because they are cheap junk).

My oldest machine is an original IBM PC (the one with 4 banks of 16 KB chips, for a total of 64 KB on the motherboard). It doesn't run anything but DOS. 

I use a few JAVA programs (JFTP, SmartSVN, and GenealogyJ), which work okay, but they also use huge amounts of lower shared memory.

I also have VBox 5.0.6 installed, with XP as a guest. The one on my main machine has quit working. I am not sure if it is a VBox problem, an XP problem, or something else. So far, VBox 5.0.6, with XP guest, is working well on the T510 and the L530.

I will make one more comment here. I have various versions of windows on most of these machines (as well as in VBox in windows, with multiple guests). I find that I spend more time trying to keep up with windows updates, than i do with all of the OS/2 work that I do. In the last few months, I have had a couple of virtual machines go bad, and I just scrapped them, rather than try to fix them. It must be very lucrative to be a windows consultant.

[Joop]

What are your OS/2 system specifications Joop? Any major issues setting it up at all?

Main system is a P4, installation by hand, always mind over machine in such cases. I have 3 installations of eCS on the machine including DOS 7 or 8 (did not run it for some time) with Psion emulators using same disk space and data(!).
I do have a 386 with OS/2 latest Dutch for testing purpose if a OS program won't install on the eCs machine like Pen for OS/2. And I have a P1 with I believe Ecs 1.0 Dutch, my old main system.

[Joop]

The "cloud" is handy for stuff that you want to share anyways, such as GPL code.

As we can access the cloud with OS/2 you can use the cloud for transport of data to your own other systems if SD disk or USB key won't work due to size problems. Just zip the data with password and after successful transport you can delete the file. I use this way for transport of data between a Windows 10 machine with bitlocker and my eCS system. No way you can use SD disks on such systems as bitlocker is only for certain Windows machines with certain specifications. Again a stupid invention of Microsoft in order to get more market share.

[Valery Sedletski]

2Joop: SD or USB key won't work due to size problems? What do you mean? I didn't encountered such SD or USB disks. I have a 64 GB USB flash and 128 GB microSDXC flash, both working fine with fat32.ifs (either FAT32 or exFAT).