"the 4GB/32Bit limit is pretty much a ticking time bomb"
"Why do you think about winflector? Isn't this another remote access software where the real program runs on another hardware on another OS and only the screen output is mirrored to your machine?"
Both of these comments are currently "problems" with OS/2, but they are not showstoppers in any way. The whole point of "ArcaOS - Thrusters on Full" (AToF ... over in the virtualization subforum) is to solve these and other problems such that you can be very productive in OS/2, and *not experience* any of these problems. For example:
AToF runs on one machine (your desktop, your laptop), and utilizes all the reources of that machine (ssd's, 32 or 64gb ram, cpu's w/ multiple cores ... and makes all of these resources available to OS/2. It does this magic with a stripped down version of win10, such that the OS is a slave to OS/2's need ... win10 doesn't steal your data, it doesn't do anything other than provide resources to multiple OS/2 vm's on one box.
Multiple OS/2 vm's free us all up from nearly every single os/2 problem that this forum is full of:
- can't compile a massive app in one OS/2 vm? dedicate an OS/2 vm to compiling, or throw multiple vm's at it ... problem solved.
- can't access the occasional windows app? winflector, running on the win10 hostOS, is there to give any OS/2 vm a windowed win app, 64-bit, running on your os/2 desktop ... problem solved.
- can't access a piece of hardware, as there are no native OS/2 device drivers? win10 hostOS provides this, and makes everything available to the OS/2 vm's running ... all of them, all on one machine ... problem solved.
There's plenty more, just not enough room in a thread reply to show off all the features ... I demo'd this at Warpstock 2023, and wrote all of the AToF threads in the virtualization subforum, all with the goal of just using tools in the toolbox to solve all of OS/2's problems. Nothing magical, other than thinking outside of the box, and stringing tools together (win10 ameliorated, virtualbox, winflector, etc.) to ensure that OS/2's insurmountable limts aren't really a problem. These limits (4gb ram, 32-bit, no modern browser, never enough native device drivers, etc.) are likely to never go away, but it turns out that we don't need to worry about them anyway.
We can run 32-bit OS/2 forever, and get at any 64-bit feature we want ... just assemble those tools in the fashion that *you choose* ... if you choose not to, that's OK as well. It doesn't change the fact that OS/2 is not limited.
Just take one inexpensive box (my $200 ebay 2018 dell laptop, i7, 32gb ram, ssd), AToF it, and I can run multiple OS/2 vm's, on one physical machine. It isn't Windows, even though win10 is my hostOS (could also be linux, etc.) ... it's OS/2 (ArcaOS) all the way! I don't see the hostOS, I don't think about it at all, but Windows is slaved to OS/2 (the way it should be), and I get to keep using OS/2's very unique features ... forever!
Anyone else can, if they choose to ...
NOTE: we need to get ArcaOS and Winflector folks together, to produce an OS/2 native winflector client, which is a port of the linux 32-bit native client to OS/2. I've done much to request this, but it's been "crickets" from both parties. Everyone else should pile on as well, repeatedly, until these two sides finally get together to get it done.