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WebSite Information => Comments, Suggestions & Questions => Topic started by: Martin Iturbide on December 26, 2018, 02:31:21 pm

Title: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Martin Iturbide on December 26, 2018, 02:31:21 pm
Hi

What do you think it will be interesting to do on the 2019 as community efforts for the platform?

The obvious for me will be to:
1) Keep supporting Arca Noae with ArcaOS.
2) Keep supporting Bitwise works to produce more open source software on 2019.
3) Support individual developers creating and porting software to this platform.

But what about from the community side and what us as individuals can do for the platform?
And I know we are already doing things like:
- People helping people on the forums.
- Insisting on collecting open source code (https://github.com/os2world) and asking for more code to be released as open (https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Open_Source_Campaign).
- Documenting EDM/2 (http://www.edm2.com/) and OS2World wiki (https://www.os2world.com/wiki/).
- Articles, blog posts and videos posted from time to time on the Internet.
- Hobbes keeps sharing files and OS2site also collecting things.
(those came at the top of my mind right now)

But what other ideas do you have for next year that can be produced by the community?

There is no right or wrong answer, just want to brainstorm a little bit.

Regards
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Wilfried on December 27, 2018, 04:43:15 pm
Quote
But what other ideas do you have for next year that can be produced by the community?

Try to make OS/2 interesting for potential users.
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Martin Iturbide on December 28, 2018, 04:06:05 pm
Quote
But what other ideas do you have for next year that can be produced by the community?

Try to make OS/2 interesting for potential users.

That is a good one. Sadly it is a problem without a clear solution. (here goes the long technicolor dreaming reply)

For the moment ArcaOS is an operating system to support OS/2 users (and business) to run the platform on newer hardware. I even talk about it with Lewis (Arca Noae) like two years ago when he was starting with ArcaOS, and that was the focus for ArcaOS initial days. For what I know (and what I can see on the test group) AN is working hard to bugfix, translate and try to create newer driver for ArcaOS on these days. So, trying to find more potential new (non OS/2) users is not on their main goal now, they try to support people/companies that uses and know OS/2 (or eCS) instead of attracting new ones. This is what I understand is the general AN strategy for the moment, but it is always to ask them directly.

Thinking more about it, what can attract other kind of users to this platform with all the lack of drivers that we have?

Idea 1 - Being cool:  Operating Systems is no longer about who had the best technology and cutting edge development. At the backend it had just to work, and on the frontend it has to look cool, which mean the frontend has to be appealing to the user.

Idea 2 - Finding a Niche: Finding a niche for OS/2 or ArcaOS is hard, we already use it as a desktop operating system, but competition is hard with a open source Linux and a Windows bundled on each PC. So finding a niche of industrial equipment, car radios, portable devices or anything that may be hot for the consumer will be desirable, but choosing an OS for a device between a $230 OS and a free of charge Linux / Android is always a challenge.

Idea 3 - Working on a Open Source Future: I came to the conclusion that the OS can not have a future while it's source code is controlled by IBM. Since IBM is not doing anything with OS/2's source code, non OS/2 users will not be willing to jump to the OS/2 train while Linux is open and while Windows is everywhere. So the idea will be to transform and progressively try to replace OS/2 components with open source replacements that offers a decent level of compatibility. It will never be an 100% exactly and compatible OS/2, but if we have a 60% of compatibility it will be good enough for a a lot of users. And at that moment, when it is shown that there is an OS not controlled by a single company that can screw you, it may have a path to grow and attract new users and markets. But this is a lot of work and people just get scared about thinking on cloning OS/2. (cheers to the people that don't get scared easily).

So,  to attract new users we can have from "idea 1" to the "idea n", mix the ideas, merge them and crunch them, but it is required money, time, vision, courage and good attitude :)

Going back to earth, it will be interesting to hear more ideas of what can be done on 2019 as a community.

Regards
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Martin Iturbide on December 28, 2018, 04:14:55 pm
Hi again.

A more "down to earth" idea for the 2019 that is ringing my mind is to try to make a RPM OS/2 software repository and re-package some OS/2 software as RPM and put them on a different RPM server.

I don't want to use the netlabs RPM server since maybe loading Netlabs with games, new ported programs and old OS/2 programs will not be the best idea. I don't want to mix thing, since I wanted a less strict RPM repository for everyone to upload their packages and try to get a RPM spec consensus and easy to use templates for people to upload things.

OS2VOICE wanted to create his own RPM server and it looked like a good idea going that way, but it haven't created the server yet. So I was also wondering how hard or easy can be to configure an RPM server.

Regards
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: RickCHodgin on December 28, 2018, 09:19:33 pm
My vision has not changed.  I plan to begin full-time development on ES/2 around Christmas 2019.  I plan to work on ES/1 in segments/snippets over the summer, and I plan to direct all of my personal developer efforts toward ES/2 in 2020.

I would do it sooner if I had funding.  I have to move on a progression as things are today.
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Mathias on December 29, 2018, 12:17:40 pm
Hi Martin! : )

Agreeing on all your aims for 2019, I'd like to add a thingy:

I wrote Lewis to let him know that I'll be taking a fresh ArcaOS PC to the (Computer Retro Gaming Night (https://computerspielenacht.htwk-leipzig.de/computerspielenacht/) ) on May 11th of 2019 in Leipzig's HTWK (DE). Since he is planning to roll out ArcaOS in DE too, I'd like to help him where I can.

As a first step, I'll see how interests are on HTWK in Leipzig with gamers. Lewis agreed to send merchandise for ArcaOS, so there will be stuff to take with you. Also, since this is a gaming con, remembering good old Warp 3, I had many many DOS games running there, which were hard to start in MS DOS without endless memmaker sessions beforehand. In Warp3 they just ran fine, raising memory emulation lever all to the right. :D - ArcaOS can do this too!
Lewis mentioned, he's got plans to make ArcaOS known to retro gamers as THE retro gaming platform for DOS and Win3.x games.
Of course this will require some optimisations for special games, so in the end almost all the good old games can be run on ArcaOS. (Remember? "better DOS than DOS" in the 90'ies).

Currently I've got around 60% of all my DOS games running fine on ArcaOS, but 40%... well.. there are some issues like slowish execution, no sound, or it doesn't work at all.. no error messages whatsoever. - If "we" can establish ArcaOS and/or OS/2 in general to be THE DOS gaming platform, this will be helping a lot to make OS/2ish operating systems more widely known among gamers. - Needless to say this opens markets too...


Of course localisation helps spreading the product to other countries than the US too, so I'll keep translating parts of ArcaOS into DE in 2019 as well. Also some software testing as usual. : )

P.S.: If you have the opportunity to visit the retro gaming night @ Leipzig's HTWK, be sure to be part of it! Visiting is free, but also bringing your own exhibits is free of charge! Your audience are ~3.000 to 3.500 people visiting each year. - Your chance to present your stuff for free! : )) - Also a nice chance to meet each other and discuss OS/2 related topics :D
Pics: [ 01 (http://"http://www.schreibfabrik.de/spielenacht/") ] [ 02 (http://"https://www.facebook.com/spielenacht/") ]


edit:
OS/2 and ArcaOS needs a fresh browser! - Be sure to support [ the QT5 port (http://"https://www.os2world.com/past-news/79-general/22325-qt-5-donation-meter.html") ] to make some progress.
Also an open source graphical FTP client would be VERY helpful.. like Filezilla, also supporting SFTP...

And in general: ArcaOS needs a fresher, more modern look. Showing ArcaOS to people at work (all developers), they agreed it looks aged. And they wondered if this is REALLY an up2date operating system. - Sure they are used to Windows 10. I know it's always nice to have stuff running under the hood, but looks are also important to get the interest of customers. If it looks like back in the 90ies, only a very small ammount of people will give it a try. It needs to look MUCH more modern! To make it backwards compatible to also run on old computers, Windows (again) shows the way: Designs that can be turned on and off. Can be off (default) to save ressources and turned on if it needs to look nice (like for instance on modern PCs that have enough ressources to manage the "extra weight" of an overload of graphics).
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: ivan on December 29, 2018, 05:29:27 pm
Hi Mathias,

Regarding your general observations re appearance.  My observations are the exact opposite - I have lost count of the number of times people have asked if I can make their win10 look like mine.  People generally want colour on their computers rather than the bland colourless thing they get with win10.

In fact the biggest stumbling block I have found for people that would otherwise use OS/2 (ArcaOS) is the total lack of USB 3 (most current laptops and desktops no longer have USB2 ports) and as you say a good browser that works with the latest secure sites.  It would also be a help if the video drivers could use modern video cards to their full potential.

I do hope that all goes well for you in Leipzig, I too have several Win3x games I would like to revive and play on OS/2 after all OS/2 was a better DOS than DOS and Windows than Windows back in the beginning.
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Martin Iturbide on December 29, 2018, 06:40:05 pm
Hi Mathias.

The "Computer Retro Gaming Night " sound great, please let me know if there is anything I can do to help (remotely). Remember that I run the OS2World gaming site, is not that hot, but maybe it can work for something. And maybe I can help you by digging out some old games for your showcase.

The "fresh look" on OS/2 will always be controversial since it is a thing of personal taste. "Make it look cool" it does not mean it has to look like Windows, MacOS or Linux, it is more challenge since it will need to maintain the looks on how people like to interact with OS/2 but without the "rough edges" (metaphoric) that OS/2 is showing in modern displays and higher resolutions. So it is controversial.

Regards
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: RickCHodgin on December 30, 2018, 04:04:58 am
The "Computer Retro Gaming Night " sound great, please let me know if there is anything I can do to help (remotely). Remember that I run the OS2World gaming site, is not that hot, but maybe it can work for something. And maybe I can help you by digging out some old games for your showcase.

I have written a Tetris-like game for Windows that I would be willing to port to OS/2.  It's two-player.  I would be willing to add socket/network support for play over LAN or Internet if anyone's interested.
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Mathias on December 30, 2018, 01:01:18 pm
Martin, whoa! Never knew ¨Enigma¨ had an OS/2 port! How cewl! - Liked the DOS version A LOT back then!
Also excellent web site, the OS2World Gaming one! Besides the vast ammount of games, it`s easy to filter and look up what you want! - Thumbs up! : )

In this case, I need to look through ALL the OS/2 games, as I could also imagine to show OS/2 games besides the DOS games too.
Of course optimising DOS games to run nicely in OS/2 and ArcaOS is a huge task. I know time is an enormous factor. Perhaps we can try some of the ¨well known¨ DOS games and optimise them to run smoothly with the current ArcaOS release. : )
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on December 30, 2018, 05:05:33 pm
There's not much we can do in 2019 for OS/2.

The system requires a recent browser

-  QT 5
-  QT 5 browser

and drivers to support newer hardware:

-  USB 3
-  WIFI
-  RAM (> 2 GB)
-  Fix/patch all remaining kernel problems with unloading high-loaded DLLs
-  UEFI (install on GPT partitions)
-  Video driver with more resolutions and better performance than Panorama/GRADD.

The hardware problems may be replaced with making the VirtualBox OS/2
extensions much more comfortable:

-  Scroll messages on mouse scrolling (like AMouse)
-  Act on the window below the mouse pointer (like AMouse)
-  Larger video resolutions
-  Shared folders (Valery apparently did a great job).

The distribution question from the past is finally solved with ArcaOS.

The future depends on that. Of course, sponsoring projects that gain
development is useful. Far behind that come other efforts. There exist
many of them, e.g.:

-  Help with documentation of projects.
-  Help with translation.
-  Help with announcements of project progression.
-  Make the source of abandoned software available.
-  Write reports about how to use software.
-  Develop software that is useful for others.

That's all not much different from that of 15 years before.
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Gregg Young on December 30, 2018, 07:36:45 pm

Currently I've got around 60% of all my DOS games running fine on ArcaOS, but 40%... well.. there are some issues like slowish execution, no sound, or it doesn't work at all.. no error messages whatsoever. - If "we" can establish ArcaOS and/or OS/2 in general to be THE DOS gaming platform, this will be helping a lot to make OS/2ish operating systems more widely known among gamers.

Hi Mathias

Have you tried the vcompat.sys driver? It claims to fix some things that will allow more DOS games to work. http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/system/vCOMPATv035b.zip I'm not really a gamer so I can't say how well it works but it might be worth a look. It also addresses the 2GB disk size limit issue.

Gregg
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 01, 2019, 03:09:38 pm
Martin, whoa! Never knew ¨Enigma¨ had an OS/2 port! How cewl! - Liked the DOS version A LOT back then!
Also excellent web site, the OS2World Gaming one! Besides the vast ammount of games, it`s easy to filter and look up what you want! - Thumbs up! : )

In this case, I need to look through ALL the OS/2 games, as I could also imagine to show OS/2 games besides the DOS games too.
Of course optimising DOS games to run nicely in OS/2 and ArcaOS is a huge task. I know time is an enormous factor. Perhaps we can try some of the ¨well known¨ DOS games and optimise them to run smoothly with the current ArcaOS release. : )

Was there not a couple of years ago also a website from an eComStation user who updated the migrate.exe database included in OS/2 to load DOS games ?

Its not that difficult if that would be stored centraly.

Martin do you remember that website I am talking about ?

Best wishes for 2019!

Roderick
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 01, 2019, 11:52:15 pm
There's not much we can do in 2019 for OS/2.

The system requires a recent browser

-  QT 5
-  QT 5 browser

and drivers to support newer hardware:

-  USB 3
-  WIFI
-  RAM (> 2 GB)
-  Fix/patch all remaining kernel problems with unloading high-loaded DLLs
-  UEFI (install on GPT partitions)
-  Video driver with more resolutions and better performance than Panorama/GRADD.

The hardware problems may be replaced with making the VirtualBox OS/2
extensions much more comfortable:

-  Scroll messages on mouse scrolling (like AMouse)
-  Act on the window below the mouse pointer (like AMouse)
-  Larger video resolutions
-  Shared folders (Valery apparently did a great job).

The distribution question from the past is finally solved with ArcaOS.

The future depends on that. Of course, sponsoring projects that gain
development is useful. Far behind that come other efforts. There exist
many of them, e.g.:

-  Help with documentation of projects.
-  Help with translation.
-  Help with announcements of project progression.
-  Make the source of abandoned software available.
-  Write reports about how to use software.
-  Develop software that is useful for others.

That's all not much different from that of 15 years before.

Well in this case we need to provide financial support to BWW that helps to finish QT.

Being at Sigurd Fastenrath his OS/2 meeting in Cologne about 3 weeks ago, Lewis Rosenthal gave a Q&A to the people. He mentioned USB 3.0 is close to going into beta. And they are looking at UEFI.

What do you mean with bugs about loading DLL's high. Are these bugs reported to Arca Noae ?

Roderick
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 02, 2019, 12:28:34 am
What do you mean with bugs about loading DLL's high. Are these bugs reported to Arca Noae ?

See the mozturbo thread, which actually started on the Arca Noae testing list. Basically when DLLs are loaded high and then unloaded, the address space is not released. Rich found the issue and filed an issue with Arca Noae.
Work around of not unloading the DLLs works good, for the first time in years I can get up time longer then 2-3 days. Had 8 days before the wind storm took out the power.
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Gregg Young on January 02, 2019, 12:30:50 am

Well in this case we need to provide financial support to BWW that helps to finish QT.

Being at Sigurd Fastenrath his OS/2 meeting in Cologne about 3 weeks ago, Lewis Rosenthal gave a Q&A to the people. He mentioned USB 3.0 is close to going into beta. And they are looking at UEFI.

What do you mean with bugs about loading DLL's high. Are these bugs reported to Arca Noae ?

Roderick

Quote
bww bitwise works posted
QtCore 5.11 porting and testing finished

 

We are proud to announce that we finished porting *and testing* the QtCore module of the Qt library version 5.11 for OS/2! This makes the text-mode part of Qt officially ready to go (including the QtNetwork, QtXml and a bunch of other utility modules). The test suite for QtCore contains 189 test units with a total amount of almost 70k tests! The release build passes 68666 tests (with only 2 occasionally failing because of the too coarse OS/2 system timer — this is to be fixed soon). The debug build passes 68572 tests (with only 2 failures as well, for the same reason). This is quite a number. Apparently, Qt5 is going to be the best Qt for OS/2 port ever.

We at bitwise wish you all Happy New Year! We also want to thank those of you who supported us through all the past years! We are looking forward into 2019 where we plan to finish Qt 5 and bring a new browser experience to the OS/2 platform (among other nice Qt 5 applications out there).

The DLL issue was reported by Rich Walsh (ticket 2194). Also I received the message above from BWW last night. Yet another reason to donate to them. Best wishes for 2019.

Gregg
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on January 02, 2019, 02:29:14 am
What do you mean with bugs about loading DLL's high. Are these bugs reported to Arca Noae ?
Basically when DLLs are loaded high and then unloaded, the address space is not released. Rich found the issue and filed an issue with Arca Noae.
Yes, that's it. BTW: Yesterday, I found docs I noted months ago about an EPM DLL whose memory isn't released after unloading if its code was loaded high. That might be related. But my skills about that are bad, so I haven't reported it.
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on January 02, 2019, 02:38:15 am
Lewis Rosenthal gave a Q&A to the people. He mentioned USB 3.0 is close to going into beta. And they are looking at UEFI.
I know. Announcements are important. Dave is already years behind of what he has planned and what was announced. (That's normal when it comes to software.) What counts is what was released and what works.
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 02, 2019, 12:46:19 pm
Was there not a couple of years ago also a website from an eComStation user who updated the migrate.exe database included in OS/2 to load DOS games ?

Its not that difficult if that would be stored centraly.

Martin do you remember that website I am talking about ?

Hi Roderick

I can not remember that website, if someone has the old URL maybe we can find something on the waybackmachine.

Happy New year to all !!
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Ian Manners on January 02, 2019, 05:28:38 pm
Was it eGamer from http://www.esimplesoft.org/ ?
I have some of the stuff at http://www.os2site.com/sw/ecs/games/index.html (http://www.os2site.com/sw/ecs/games/index.html)
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Mathias on January 02, 2019, 07:56:25 pm
_____________________________

Ivan @ appearance:
Hehe yep, maybe Windows 8/10 was a bad example. ; ) - Rather meant colourful effects, like when a progress bar advances, in general getting away from the legacy black on greyish KDE looks.. --> https://www.sallyx.org/sally/images/linux/linuxjpg/kde4.jpg

To make things clear: I like it as it is, and I do not miss anything, graphic wise. But it's not me alone. I've bought the license already. The product needs to convince others too now. ; ) - And what I hear, they are not pleased by the aged look of the current product.
As for myself I'd wish for a Warp 3 theme for ArcaOS, including these cewl sunken edge select bar from back then, instead of the warp4'ish oblique one-coloured (text colour inverting) select bar, like Win95 did back then.. urgh - Liked the Warp 3 flavour a lot better.
Warp 3 select bar in transparent sunken edge: https://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/bsgfx/ibm/os2-scr-08.gif
Warp 4 select bar in white on blue: https://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/bsgfx/ibm/os2warp4-scr-a5.png

But as you said the main concern are not the looks at the moment:
- USB3
- up2date browser (many remote maintenance-, backup- and observation tools have web based control inferfaces nowdays, which do not work in Firefox 38 yet)
- video card drivers (resolutions, 2D and maybe even 3D acceleration)


> I do hope that all goes well for you in Leipzig

Hrhrr, thanks Ivan! I'll put a report together after the event in May 2019, and post the results here in the forums. : )



_____________________________

Rick @ net tetris:
That sounds like a cewl project! Will the be usable until May 2019?


_____________________________

Gregg Young @ DOS graphics fix:
> Have you tried the vcompat.sys driver? It claims to fix some things that will allow more DOS games to work. http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/system/vCOMPATv035b.zip I'm not really a gamer so I can't say how well it works but it might be worth a look. It also addresses the 2GB disk size limit issue.

Sounds like THE honey pod I've been looking for! : )) - I'll check this out asap! - Thanks Gregg!


_____________________________

Roderick Klein @ migrate.exe database:
> Its not that difficult if that would be stored centraly.

Totally agreed! If there is such a thing, there should be a central spot to update and download the db.
Makes no sense to reinvent the bike 50 times.. ; )
If not, I'd offer my webserver to host the thingy, OR even better: Upload to hobbes, if they also take such stuff. : ))

_____________________________

Ian Manners @ OS/2 gaming sites:

> I have some of the stuff at http://www.os2site.com/sw/ecs/games/index.html

Wo~howww.. *bookmarked* :D
This needs some time to look into. I'll be testing this shortly, I hope. : )

Thanks Ian! : ))
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 02, 2019, 08:34:53 pm
Quote
As for myself I'd wish for a Warp 3 theme for ArcaOS, including these cewl sunken edge select bar from back then, instead of the warp4'ish oblique one-coloured (text colour inverting) select bar, like Win95 did back then.. urgh - Liked the Warp 3 flavour a lot better.
Warp 3 select bar in transparent sunken edge: https://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/bsgfx/ibm/os2-scr-08.gif
Warp 4 select bar in white on blue: https://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/bsgfx/ibm/os2warp4-scr-a5.png

The scheme palette is still there, under System Setup-->Appearance. If you want Warp V3, just drag it to which ever object you'd like or hold down the ALT key to change the whole system.
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: RickCHodgin on January 02, 2019, 09:30:16 pm
Rick @ net tetris:
That sounds like a cewl project! Will the be usable until May 2019?

I presently have all the bugs fixed.  I have a list of 8 things left to add.  I hope to have them completed this weekend.

I could work on an OS/2 port of it later in January, or early February.  It shouldn't take too long.  It only uses a small portion of the Windows GDI presently for graphics, and with some tweaking it could be converted to use OS/2's GPI.  I also saw where SDL has been ported to OS/2, and I use that for the sound today ... so it looks like it would be fairly easy.

I've been using a USB-based SNES-like game controller for my game development, so you have left/right/up/down, and then four buttons (a,b,y,x) as well as the l,r buttons where your index fingers are.  It uses keyboard characters as well, so people can play it on a keyboard.

We'll see. :-)
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Mathias on January 03, 2019, 11:31:14 am
Hehe thanks Dave, but the Scheme archive only holds colour schemes, not effects. - Good idea though!
I've tried the Warp V3 scheme first (system-wide), then applied the Icon Theme of Warp 3, rebooted as I was told, and... everything looked indeed much more Warp 3'ish, with the exception of the sunken edge @ selector bar in menus. That one is missing still. (see the attached picture)
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 03, 2019, 02:47:24 pm
Hi

What about a different crazy idea, like trying to raise money to open source some important OS/2 software that the author does not want to open without a compensation?

Any suggestion on which software?

For example, paying for the source code (to be open sourced) of Object Desktop (changing it's name will be mandatory), and maybe joining it together with XWorkplace.

...crazy ideas are welcome !!!

Regards
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Mathias on January 06, 2019, 12:10:12 am
Martin, mhmm.. sometimes missed something like File Commander/2 (http://silk.apana.org.au/fc2ftp.html). Currently it`s Shareware. Nothing revolutionary, but very handy at times : )

Or.. if we REALLY can fund some money, why not Lotus Notes and/or Domino.. ; ) - But that might be out of range, as IBM might not hand out the source code...
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: Doug Bissett on January 06, 2019, 04:30:00 am
Quote
Any suggestion on which software?

PMView is an important program. I have no idea what might be required to obtain it.
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: David Graser on January 06, 2019, 07:40:01 am
Quote
Any suggestion on which software?

PMView is an important program. I have no idea what might be required to obtain it.

I agree with Doug.  PMView is really a must have program.

FC/2 seems to be liked by quite a few.  I am a FM/2 man myself.  It is really what one gets used to.

KO continues to give us an updated VLC.  This is a must for multimedia.
Title: Re: The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year
Post by: bfulton on January 07, 2019, 07:36:56 am
One thing I enjoy is to read accounts and rundowns of installations done on various software devices. It is helpful to know the extent of workability with different devices. For example, someone could install AC 5.1 on a Acer Aspire 1 and just see where it goes. Most of these devices would need the USB flash installation, but it would be neat just to hear about what worked, what didn't and what really didn't work. 

Individual reviews from every day users could do wonders for spreading information to PC users who might be curious.

As an aside, it is time to start talking about USB 3.0 support and even a discussion of the theory and merits of  USB-C (maybe that's asking too much). Fun discussions about hardware, sharing and commenting on the latest news from HP, Dell. Keeping things light and fun and practical.  :)