Author Topic: Is eComStation DEAD?  (Read 95654 times)

dbanet

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Re: Is eComStation DEAD?
« Reply #75 on: August 02, 2014, 09:55:05 pm »
becuase realized that arguing here makes completely no sense.

I support Martin's point of view.
Honestly your arguing is useful since it got us considering alternative kernels such as reactos which actually makes a lot of sense.
So if you have some thoughts feel free to share :)

Touché.

Alex Taylor

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Re: Is eComStation DEAD?
« Reply #76 on: August 03, 2014, 04:52:41 am »
Like, the core linux kernel is already mature, with 90% hardware support and support for existing technologies (64 bit etc).
Why not make a new linux distribution, using the already existing technology - and then focuse on specific things that could make it more like os/2?
For example if we the community created a linux distro with a WPS like desktop experience, it would effectly become a new os/2 at least from the user gui experience.

So then instead of having to create a completely new os, now you can just focus all the effort on the desktop experience, since os/2 has a very unique WPS interface that has never been replicated.

And who knows, as we get more users, then you could futher add features, like an os/2 "classic" emulator that can run native os/2 & dos apps - similar to what apple did with os/x.

So yeah.. I think we could aim for a new os called Lin/2 :).

This has been proposed many times, and in fact was attempted at least once: IIRC this was basically what the Voyager project was about, although I think they went with another OS kernel rather than Linux.

I've never been a fan of the idea... at least, not if it takes the approach of simply creating a WPS on top of a whole Linux OS.  I think it's sad to imply that what makes OS/2 special is nothing more than the GUI experience. 

You can take a Ferrari's chassis, dash and seats, and stick them onto the innards of a Volvo... but what you end up with will not be a Ferrari. It might be a nice car, but neither Ferrari lovers nor Volvo lovers would likely be impressed.

muffetta

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Re: Is eComStation DEAD?
« Reply #77 on: August 03, 2014, 08:24:58 am »
Certainly respect all your points of view, but also do some considerations, and evaluate them without the devotion and love of the passionate, partly because I too am an OS2 fan:
If I plan a project that resembles a complete rewrite of an operating system (based on which model, open or closed source is of little importance) and I have only two programmers, I know that in the best case the first goals reach them in 15 years, probably, if I have, instead, 500 programmers, I reach the goal in 5 years. Users want to continue to use this system because bla .. bla .. bla .. What should I do if I only have 2 programmers in the meantime? tries to answer yourself.
Mensys/SSI has not pursued any similar project that would point to a definitive resolution of the problem by rewriting from scratch essential parts of the operating system (if I have not the original source code what should i do? Have to rewrite it from scratch, are you agree?) but aimed only to take IBM OS/2's users-park and maintain it, okay, a small software house, requires short-term goals .. bla .. bla .. bla, well, corporate policies, that's fine, but You have totally missed the goal.
A team of programmers led by engineers really motivated would have
dealt with the problem looking forward and with a lot of breath, a visual much more extensive, they would have to figure something reliable in short-term (achievable goal even with few resources) and then after 14 years (help me to say many!!!), collaborating with the OSFree team, given that the resources were few, they would given you at least the first tenderly child of a new, fully regenerated OS2. They would not waste time to adapt, try to configure, a patch here, another there .. blah blah blah, does not give me the code? well, I'll rewrite alone, but it takes the time it takes, and to not lose my clients, they would study a valid alernative, knowing that this alternative tomorrow will be useful.
I want to express this concept when I say that with a different point of view we would not have wasted time and resources.
Again, forgive the outburst.

Andi B.

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Re: Is eComStation DEAD?
« Reply #78 on: August 03, 2014, 12:54:56 pm »
Quote
You can take a Ferrari's chassis, dash and seats, and stick them onto the innards of a Volvo... but what you end up with will not be a Ferrari. It might be a nice car, but neither Ferrari lovers nor Volvo lovers would likely be impressed.
I like this statement very much. :) Well done Alex.

Even if someone could find and pay the manpower to program a WPS like GUI on top of Linux nearly no one will use it. Cause even in 15 years it will be by far not as stable and bug free than all the other *nix frontends already available. Nor will it be able to transfer the look and feel of the *nix apps to OS/2.

I get the feeling most of the people here do not have any clue hwo the different parts of an OS works together to generate the typical 'feeling' of these system. It is a dream to only port some GUI on top of another kernel + drivers to continue working the way we did lets say the last 20 years.

If I ever came to the point where I've to use another base OS on my private systems the smallest part will be to learn to live with the different GUI. Users of other GUIs will ROFTL when knowing the restrictions and bugs of the WPS. Come on, we use OS/2 - eCS cause we are used to it as a whole. We like the stability (ahm, this is not true anymore, other systems are more stable now, only try to compile some stuff or heavy use the WPS or...), the lack of viruses, the antique look and feel, but mostly cause we are used to it and know every single config.sys line and os2.ini entry by heart. If you change the base there's only a small additional step to use another GUI.

Long term plan - IMHO Mensys (to be more specific Roderick cause who else has worked on eCS there?) did have sort of long term plan. But his plan was based on a little more realistic estimation of what can be done with the little to non existent developer and user base than on big dreams we read ever and ever again. If you ever have written some code or contributed to some open source project you would know who much effort it needs to only improve some small parts and bring it at least to a quality level users start to try it out and give feedback instead keep silent or even worse vague complaining about although they not even looked at the readmes. Moreover even if people work a long time on some stuff and get paid for it, there's no guarantee to get some useful output. Only think about the crappy ACPI before David took over.

What I want to say can be summed up as stop dreaming of 'warme Eislutscher' (maybe someone can translate this ;)) and get of the ground and support the few people who invest hours and hours of there private time and money to let you run your system on some new hardware still today. Even if it costs you a ridiculous amount of money like OpenOffice SS, Java/QT4 sponsoring units or Injoy/PMView/Mesa/.... license. If these few developers leave it's finally over. And trust me, if these few active developers decide rpm is a necessity today then start using it. Write articles how to use it for dummys or fill tickets instead endless discussing why you dislike this non native OS/2 way of doing things. Other options are to use some sort of rpm on *nix or get used to stupid WIn behavior not storing window size an position any more or....

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Is eComStation DEAD?
« Reply #79 on: August 03, 2014, 07:28:07 pm »
Hi

I can not think if making an OS/2 clone over Linux is a good or bad idea, because we need to have first PM, SOM and WPS. If we ever have an open source clone of this three components it will be interesting to see if there is resources from the Linux community to make that port.

OS/2 is more than the GUI (having a mask that looks like WPS on Linux GUI it is not porting OS/2 to Linux), I think what I like is the whole architecture. On the kernel side, (things that I don't understand complete) I started to like more the "Microkernel" architecture more than the "Monolithic kernel". why? Because I found out that for "Monolithic kernel" (Linux) you need to compile the kernel every time you have a new driver that is not supported by the kernel, please correct me if I'm wrong.

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Dave Yeo

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Re: Is eComStation DEAD?
« Reply #80 on: August 03, 2014, 08:08:22 pm »
Linux has modules, which are basically device drivers that can be dynamical loaded and unloaded at any time. As an example, when the read/write HPFS driver was first released, it was as a module (actually 2, one for kernel 2.0.x and one for kernel 2.2.x) which you could copy to the right spot under /lib and load. Forget the actual commands now :). This is true of many device drivers, they're modules that are only loaded when needed by your system. IIRC to build a module only needs the kernel headers installed as well.
Unluckily Linux shows a possible flaw in the open source paradigm. Namely that they don't bother to keep the ABI compatible as everything can just be recompiled. This means that modules need to be rebuilt regularly and breaks binary blobs such as some of the closed graphic  drivers.

Andreas Schnellbacher

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Re: Is eComStation DEAD?
« Reply #81 on: August 03, 2014, 08:11:09 pm »
OS/2 is more than the GUI
What OS/2 makes unique is:
  • You control the way the OS does things.
  • Configuration and processing works user-friendly.
  • That doesn't necessarily afford the (buggy, unsupported and closed-source) WPS. Any other system which provides most of it would theoretically match, while a replacement doesn't exist.
Most people tell that OS X is the modern OS that provides most of the needed features (and look and feel). Note that it's not any Linux distro which these people prefer.

BTW, about the car comparison: What is the gain of welding new Ferrari parts with ancient Volvo parts together, while the Volvo replacement parts are not available any more and the available parts are too rotten to be of any use? Wouldn't it be more useful to find a Volvo driver who wants to drive it until it breaks apart and save the money for the Ferrari parts?

(Car comparisons usually don't work.)

Andi B.

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Re: Is eComStation DEAD?
« Reply #82 on: August 03, 2014, 08:26:25 pm »
Quote
Wouldn't it be more useful to find a Volvo driver who wants to drive it until it breaks apart and save the money for the Ferrari parts?
That's the way I do it although I fear I can not save enough money for the Ferrari during the rest of my lifetime :) But honestly the Volvo (eCS) isn't that bad...

Quote
(Car comparisons usually don't work.)
That's true as I can not see any OS which compares to the Ferrari.

Ian Manners

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Re: Is eComStation DEAD?
« Reply #83 on: August 03, 2014, 08:56:18 pm »
I drive and own a 1994 Volvo 850 T5 as well as use OS/2, what does that say about me :-)
Cheers
Ian B Manners

Andi B.

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Re: Is eComStation DEAD?
« Reply #84 on: August 03, 2014, 10:37:30 pm »
I memory serves me well Ian you're the guy who even read Austrian newspaper. I've got the feeling we share some quirks...

Pete

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Re: Is eComStation DEAD?
« Reply #85 on: August 04, 2014, 03:12:23 am »
Hi All


You can take a Ferrari's chassis, dash and seats, and stick them onto the innards of a Volvo... but what you end up with will not be a Ferrari. It might be a nice car, but neither Ferrari lovers nor Volvo lovers would likely be impressed.


Just to add a touch of humour to this discussion:

Sometime around 1980 a friend purchased a Reliant Robin - a fairly cheap lightweight 3 wheel car(?) with a fibreglass body; often the butt of British comedy - and we customised it somewhat by changing the radiator grille for a radiator grille that originated on a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow.

Rolls Royce sales agents would foam at the mouth if my friend drove across their car sales/service forecourt but Rolls Royce owners often behaved the same as the rest of humanity and were amused to see a "Roller" grille on a beat up old "plastic pig" (fairly common uk slang at the time for the Reliant 3 wheelers) and often asked how much work had been involved. No Roller owner was that interested in playing Swapsies though...


With regard to the rest of this discussion: I think I would be amused to see a good working clone of the WPS on linux
and interested in how it had been achieved. I doubt I would want to use it though as I am simply not that keen on linux and doubt that putting a WPS clone on linux will change my mind about linux - somewhat similar to Roller owners looking at a Roller grille on a Reliant 3 wheeler but not wanting to swap vehicles I guess  :-)


Regards

Pete




Martin Iturbide

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Re: Is eComStation DEAD?
« Reply #86 on: August 04, 2014, 04:04:26 am »
Sander Nyman made a funny joke about some of the last rumors at: http://os2news.warpstock.org/
I needed to surf on the web to known which was the "the third movement of Frederic Chopin's Piano Sonata No.2".... at the end it was some classic hit I heard on the past :)

Sander's comments may be funny, but I think he touches something interesting. What is going on since December of 2013 with XEU? Why all this secret? Why we haven't hear anything about it?
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David Kiley

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Re: Is eComStation DEAD?
« Reply #87 on: August 04, 2014, 06:00:11 am »
You can take a Ferrari's chassis, dash and seats, and stick them onto the innards of a Volvo... but what you end up with will not be a Ferrari. It might be a nice car, but neither Ferrari lovers nor Volvo lovers would likely be impressed.

I understand your position but personally don't think the analogy fits.. since it would actually be turning volvo into a Porsche :)..
Since we would have an awesome wps experience without buggy usb, firefox constantly crashing, buggy flash etc.

Using a better engine under the hood would mean things would just work, instead of constantly struggling to patch a proprietary code to get something that sorta works.
 
Like I said previously iv'e watched many open source projects grow small to big so i'm not sure what makes you think the same couldn't happen. You could have said no one would be interested in ReactOS or Freedos (I mean, there are plenty of dos versions out there), but people are.

Linux maybe wasn't the best choice though.. it probably does make sense to use a closer relative like reactos, which maintains some of the linage to the nt system history.



David Kiley

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Re: Is eComStation DEAD?
« Reply #88 on: August 04, 2014, 06:12:44 am »
Most people tell that OS X is the modern OS that provides most of the needed features (and look and feel). Note that it's not any Linux distro which these people prefer.

That is about to change :), at least in my area since i'm going to be setting up linux desktops for people.
It's true it takes a lot more work than a mac to get it setup, but it runs very smooth once it is, and with a long release distro like centos you don't need to reinstall the OS for 10 years at a time if you don't want to.
Not saying linux is the best per say.. just saying I think people underestimate it and its possible future effect on technology.


guzzi

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Re: Is eComStation DEAD?
« Reply #89 on: August 04, 2014, 10:39:34 pm »
It's all so familiar.... Not just for eCS. Maybe someone should adapt this image to suit the topic)