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Comments, Suggestions & Questions / Re: Benefits, purpose for OS/2/eComStation, and Serenity's vision
« on: March 18, 2013, 03:10:44 am »It's fun to talk with knowledgeable people such as yourself, Doug. Do you see eComStation working up to 64bit in the next 2 - 4 years? Or maybe even sooner? Also, don't worry, it's not all for naught telling me all of this stuff. I'm installing Virtualbox right now and going to try out OS/2 that way. I'm a PC Guru, and it would be shameful for someone to ask me "Hey, have you used OS/2?" and I would have to say No. Yes, I'm a technophile. lol
Some would argue with you about the "knowledgeable" part.
No, I don't see OS/2 (eCS) going to 64 bit, unless somebody can build a 64 bit kernel with the capabilities of the OS/2 kernel. Nothing is quite like it, so it is not as easy as taking a Linux kernel, and fitting the rest of OS/2 to it. In fact it may come to that someday, when other options run out. Whether it can be made to work, or not, will depend on a lot of things. The biggest obstacle will be finding competent programmers to attempt to do the job. Apparently, a few have tried, but it seems that they gave up (or they have hidden their work).
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But I thought eComStation was the rebirth of OS/2? Doesn't that mean they have the source code? How are they supporting newer hardware if that isn't the case? That's a tad confusing. So you're basically telling me when we start doing 128bit computing and only have backwards compatibility for 64bit, no 32 bit software will work? I thought eCS already made it translate 32bit to 16bit(kernel) stuff?
No, eComStation is not the "rebirth", it is more like the "extension" of OS/2. Some would say "life support". No they do NOT have the source code, except for a few drivers, and a couple of other things. They do have the source code for a lot of the newer stuff, that has been added since IBM abandoned it (which isn't entirely correct either, IBM still owns OS/2, and Mensys does pay royalties to use OS/2). In fact, there was a rumor going around, that IBM has managed to lose the source code, but I doubt if that is actually true. They have neither confirmed, or denied, that rumor. 128 bit processors are currently an unknown entity. When they start to show up, decisions will need to be made, but I suspect that 32 bit capable processors will be around for a while. I don't know the details of converting stuff from 32 bit to 16 bit. I think most of that is in the device driver interface. Support for newer hardware mostly involves device drivers. ACPI support was, apparently, developed with the help of Intel. The biggest thing that keeps it going, however, is that there are a number of very knowledgeable programmers (I won't attempt to name them, because I will miss some of them), who do wonderful work, with very little to work with, and Mensys tries to keep it all together, with a "shoestring" budget, and a lot of diplomacy. After they pay for staff (two of them, I think), royalties, some important development projects, and expenses, there wouldn't be much left.
Give eComStation a try (older versions of OS/2 can be made to work in VBox, but you need to know a lot about it to get it to work properly). You may learn to love it, or, you may hate it. There is rarely a middle ground.