Author Topic: OS/2 - Graphic User Interface - Desktop - Personal Experiences ?  (Read 21912 times)

Martin Iturbide

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Re: OS/2 - Graphic User Interface - Desktop - Personal Experiences ?
« Reply #15 on: December 26, 2023, 02:06:24 am »
Hello.

Another things I was thinking about is the "copy of directories with the same name" via the GUI. I noticed in other OSes, when you copy a directory into a place that already has a directory with the same name, it asks you to "combine" the content of the directory (or sometimes it even does ask you, it just combine it). While OS/2 asks you if you want to only replace the directory with the new one without any combine option.

Regards
Martin Iturbide
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Sabon

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Re: OS/2 - Graphic User Interface - Desktop - Personal Experiences ?
« Reply #16 on: March 02, 2026, 07:54:37 am »
Hello

I want to discuss these for months, but I had been holding back, I don't know if it is for fear or lack of time to organize the thoughts.

Sometimes when we discuss about OS/2-ArcaOS we say: "The Graphical User Interface needs some love" (Figuratively speaking  ;D ).

1) The question would be, what features you think ArcaOS and OS/2 are lacking when referring to the GUI that you think will be useful?
- Since this is a personal option question, there are no right or wrong answers. I just want to know more about it.

2) Once you install ArcaOS or even OS/2, what utilities (or customization) do you use to improve the GUI as you like?
- For example, for me now it is must XWP 1.0.16 with xCenter big icons
- Or some others like X-It to have more function buttons on their desktop windows.

Again, this is not a discussion to impose a way to working with your machine, just to try to see what I (or We) may be missing while working with the ArcaOS GUI.

Regards

I was a VERY enthusiastic OS/2 user for both personal and work in the 1990s until IBM said they weren't going to support OS/2 anymore, at which time I switched to Mac. Note that I never "loved" using Macs nearly as much as I did OS/2.

Well I'm retired after programming and systems analysis for 40 years and now I can use any [censored by me] operating system that I damn well please and I'm very excited and very worried about OS/2 as of today (March 1st, 2026).

1) There WILL come a time when 32 bit computers are hard to find or will be expensive. Not that computers in general are Inexpensive. But you know what I mean. What will happen to OS/2 in the future? Windows is VERY substandard compared to OS/2 as a user experience for me. Apple, since Steve Jobs died, has no direction because the people running the show have no clue about design and function for an operating system. Linux is FAR too fussy for me. I want to spend time using my applications, not fiddling with things to get the operating system working. OS/2 is like a Honda where it is stable and with a little general maintenance it can run for a LONG time without reboot or other stupid things that you have to do with Windows like rebooting once a month or even once a year unless there is a big update to the OS (meaning OS/2).

So ... my BIG question is this. I KNOW that one or more groups has tried to create an open source version of OS/2 in the past and that petered out and died. To be blunt, without a 64 bit version of OS/2, the companies that currently pay for support will wither and die and the OS/2 will die due to lack of income for Arca Noae and we will be left with whatever the last updated version of OS/2 that we have at that point. I don't want that to be the case.

2) We NEED a version of OS/2 that is inexpensive even if that means creating a limited version of OS/2 that will allow nerds that are interested in alternate OSs to be able to try out OS/2 and see why people like or in my case LOVE OS/2.

3) Now that I'm back to using OS/2 I will be trying to start creating small programs to get myself back up to speed on OS/2 programming. Again, it's been close to 30 years since I wrote programs in C or C++ for OS/2 so I need to get reacquainted with it.

Are there any resources for programming in OS/2 that someone can point me to including a compiler. I've been trying to find resources other than the Arca Noae website which doesn't have any of this kind of information.

4) I want to find people that are interested in talking about OS/2 and working together on projects that I might be able to help out with. Unfortunately most of my programming for the last 15 years has been with Visual Basic which I HATED but it paid for my mortgage and my retirement. And no, I didn't work for Microsoft or any company where I made money from stock. I worked for organizations that didn't have stock but did have a retirement package through a union.

Hopefully someone will see this and respond.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: OS/2 - Graphic User Interface - Desktop - Personal Experiences ?
« Reply #17 on: March 03, 2026, 05:48:35 pm »
Hello, and welcome back to the OS/2 community.

I was a VERY enthusiastic OS/2 user for both personal and work in the 1990s until IBM said they weren't going to support OS/2 anymore, at which time I switched to Mac. Note that I never "loved" using Macs nearly as much as I did OS/2.

Well I'm retired after programming and systems analysis for 40 years and now I can use any [censored by me] operating system that I damn well please and I'm very excited and very worried about OS/2 as of today (March 1st, 2026).

1) There WILL come a time when 32 bit computers are hard to find or will be expensive. Not that computers in general are Inexpensive. But you know what I mean. What will happen to OS/2 in the future? Windows is VERY substandard compared to OS/2 as a user experience for me. Apple, since Steve Jobs died, has no direction because the people running the show have no clue about design and function for an operating system. Linux is FAR too fussy for me. I want to spend time using my applications, not fiddling with things to get the operating system working. OS/2 is like a Honda where it is stable and with a little general maintenance it can run for a LONG time without reboot or other stupid things that you have to do with Windows like rebooting once a month or even once a year unless there is a big update to the OS (meaning OS/2).

So ... my BIG question is this. I KNOW that one or more groups has tried to create an open source version of OS/2 in the past and that petered out and died. To be blunt, without a 64 bit version of OS/2, the companies that currently pay for support will wither and die and the OS/2 will die due to lack of income for Arca Noae and we will be left with whatever the last updated version of OS/2 that we have at that point. I don't want that to be the case.

2) We NEED a version of OS/2 that is inexpensive even if that means creating a limited version of OS/2 that will allow nerds that are interested in alternate OSs to be able to try out OS/2 and see why people like or in my case LOVE OS/2.

3) Now that I'm back to using OS/2 I will be trying to start creating small programs to get myself back up to speed on OS/2 programming. Again, it's been close to 30 years since I wrote programs in C or C++ for OS/2 so I need to get reacquainted with it.

Are there any resources for programming in OS/2 that someone can point me to including a compiler. I've been trying to find resources other than the Arca Noae website which doesn't have any of this kind of information.

4) I want to find people that are interested in talking about OS/2 and working together on projects that I might be able to help out with. Unfortunately most of my programming for the last 15 years has been with Visual Basic which I HATED but it paid for my mortgage and my retirement. And no, I didn't work for Microsoft or any company where I made money from stock. I worked for organizations that didn't have stock but did have a retirement package through a union.

Hopefully someone will see this and respond.

Just feel free to create a new thread on this forum and ask.

a) Like it was posted on a different thread, visit the ArcaOS Information for Developers first:
-- https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/information-for-developers/

b) I also have a collection of OS/2 applications source code. I played in the past with some Presentation manager Samples.
https://github.com/orgs/OS2World/repositories?q=DEV-SAMPLES-PM

I'm not a developer, I was just interested in the compile and linking procedure to learn more about it.

c) Our resource for OS/2 development articles is EDM/2, but it is down now, let see if gets back later.
- https://www.edm2.com/


Also, if you want to develop for OS/2, it depended where do you want to start:
- Do you want to start compiling some sample?
- Maybe later you can escalate to a simple port with gcc and later to more complex ports with gcc and Qt5 ?
It depends of you skill.

Or maybe later we can look around for a more specific necessity of the community and focus on bringing something there.

Just keep asking, create a new thread with an specific topic and we will see what we can do.

Regards
« Last Edit: March 03, 2026, 05:58:11 pm by Martin Iturbide »
Martin Iturbide
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WRT Sabon's many recent comments and thread posting, and specifically to "where now, OS/2?":

Current OS?2 problems:
  - platform ... it's 32-bit, and this won't easily change
  - hardware (running os/2 native), device drivers (wifi, etc.), and so on ...
  - software ... little to no new native apps, but much porting of unix/linux apps to os/2

and much more. Searching this and other forums points out the many problems with OS/2. That said, there is still much that can be done with it, and I think it will last quite some time.

What I do to solve all the above problems, is:
  - run a host os (Win10) ... solves all 64-bit, device driver, etc. type of problems
  - run virtualbox on this host os ... run any os in a vm, and more than one ... test anything, forever
  - run one or more OS/2 (ArcaOS) in vm's ... solves many os/2 ram, fs, wifi, etc. (guest additions)
  - run Winflector on host os ... 64-bit apps on host os are delivered into OS/2, in a window.

My original notes on all this are in the virtualization subforum ... AToF threads ... this should carry us on OS/2 long into the future. Perhaps it will give us time to get some form of OS?2 to 64-bits.

Specifically for developers, you can run multiple OS/2 vm's, perhaps one that is compiling, while your main OS/2 desktop is serving up your desktop of daily stuff. Host OS is running in the background, doing everything else on your 64-bit machine ... yep, Win10 is in effect, slaved to OS/2 and doing things for OS/2.

If you (or anyone) think there is some problem that AToF can't solve, or that doesn't have a modern workaround, please let me know (in a new thread, in the virtualization sub-forum).

I use AToF daily, finally getting the most out of my 64-bit, 64gb ram, and SSD's machine, running OS/2 (ArcaOS). I test all kinds of weird OS's ... from early dos, win, os/2 version, thru linux/unix, on up to mainframe os's ... all of them in vm's under the host os, and it all just works. None of the OS's know that they aren't running natively, but they have access to the modern world.

Many on this forum want to run OS/2 (ArcaOS) natively, as the host os ... nothing wrong with that, other than it is very problematic. Arca Noae's efforts are huge in this area, and we get a version of OS/2 that will carry us far, if you can work around or look past those problems.

ArcaOS works very well for me in a vm. But, I can't run natively, so a host os, virtualbox, winflector, and everything else in one or more vm's is my answer to every single one of OS/2's problems, as described in this forum. This will carry me way into the future, and OS/2 will continue to do everything I need it to do, via the AToF system.

Hope this helps ...