Greetings everybody, longtime lurker, first time poster here.
At the risk of getting flamed on my first post, I will ask a very basic question. I am your average computer duffer, not an IT guy, don't know my way around HTML or anything-- just a guy who uses and needs a computer for their everyday life. My curiosity of all things OS/2 came from a long-ago conversation with a guy who did know his way around a computer's guts, and who adored this OS for its stability and elegance. Fast forward to my first laptop (had a desktop for years) in September 2008, a Dell XPS. Not a bad system, but sweet jebus I got so tired of the Blue Screen Of Death happening weekly. My writing and consulting business is starting to gain some traction, to the point where I'm going to need a dedicated work system, and leave the Dell specifically for home use.
I live in Germany so my concern is to get a system that won't let me down/lose information, dodges most viruses and hacks out there, and lets me go about my daily routine without fanfare-- my experiences with the Dell (and Vista/XP/the truly awful Me, etc.) make me want to steer clear of Microsoft products though, and Apple holds no allure either. I was thinking eCS. Blondeguy has been very cool in this regard, and if I am to get a eCS laptop, it'll likely be one of his pre-loaded systems, but I'll ask the board-- can a computer illiterate like me (one who's used to 100% compatibility) live with eCS, and will I be able to use it with zero changes in my daily routine? This means using a wireless mouse (never could get the hang of a touchpad) surfing the web, playing music (i.e. visiting Last.fm, buying and playing MP3's), watching videos and movies online, writing, sending, receiving and printing documents and spreadsheets -- you know, normal duffer stuff. It would appear that the eCS 2.0 addresses most of the quirks of the previous generations of eCS & OS/2, but I'm no expert.
In theory anyways, I am what Serenity is looking for-- an average Joe user willing to make the leap of faith from MS and Apple products and into their product. But am I ready for it? And is it ready for me? Flame on people!
G
Hi
I use a Logitech EX110 Desktop (wireless keyboard and mouse) with my eCS system without any problems - apart from needing mouse batteries replaced every few (3/4) weeks. Guess that answers question 1 :-)
You will want to look to add some software (mainly free :-) to an eCS system in order to accomplish most, if not all, of your requirements:-
Probably an updated version of Firefox browser and Thunderbird mail/news - or Seamonkey "Internet Suite" - free
OpenOffice for M$ Office capability - costs
mplayer (media player) and Smplayer (a gui for mplayer) for multimedia playback - free - there is a "how to get this working with a browser" here http://www.os2world.com/content/view/17999/2/
Flash playback - Flash7 is free - can be a pain; sometimes it works fine, sometimes it does not - and it can crash the browser. Hopefully the Flash10 for eCS will become available soon and resolve most, if not all, Flash problems. I understand Flash10 will be a freebie for eCS2.0 systems - probably requires the eCS2.0 system to be Registered.
There is an mp3 package that hooks into the system and makes the system natively capable of playing mp3 files - free - hopefully someone else will provide a few details as I *never* bother with compressed noise.
I think the above answers your main queries.
If/When ordering your system from Blondeguy you may want to ask if he can supply, install and configure the extra software. Be aware that could involve some extra cost - especially if you order OpenOffice.
If you were reasonably competent using a WinPC then there is no reason that you should not be able to adapt to other systems - but these things do take a little while :-)
Regards
Pete
I'd say
no.
- Watching movies online will probably give you a headache. Flash 10 is under development, but still very unstable.
- There is no easy-to-use accounting software available. I'm using Textbuch my Martin Vieregg (www.textbuch.de) but that works like a compiler. If you are looking for something that includes creating offers and invoices, managing your customers base, and accounting, you are out of luck. There are some open sourced web-based applications but they are notoriouly badly documented and last I looked they required modules that are not available on OS/2. There are also some for OOo, but see below.
- Online filing of tax reports is not possible. Elster does not exist for OS/2, and the online version requires a later Java version. Textbuch includes a feature for generating a file for Winston, but I never got that to run on OS/2 with the Odin wrapper.
- Given that OOo relies on a current Java for several features, those are not available on OS/2.
All in all, I wouldn't advise SOHO users to switch to OS/2 or eComStation. You'd probably be better off with Ubuntu Linux.
Thanks for the kind words.
My preloaded computers already come with the Flash 7 and OpenOffice.org mentioned above. I try to give my customers the software I use every day on my eCS system. No system is perfect, and I just do what I can.
I love watching music videos, but I use YouTube. I just tried Last.FM, and it doesn't work. My Flash 7 is too old. Playing MP3 and watching movies works fine if you have the actual media files, but if it's some commercial web site, they may have it locked up so I can't use it. This could all improve a lot with the new Flash 10. (See other OS/2 World posts about that.)
Exchanging MS Word docs, spreadsheets etc. works very well. The new DOCX format from MS Office 2003 is problematic, we have a beta that doesn't always work for me. I do not currently include the beta on my systems.
Finally, apologies for everyone about my website. I've sold every machine I built, so please be patient while I build up my inventory again.
my company quit ecs last year because of ancient java, adobe reader, flash, etc. our network engineer, a former forum member and financial contributor, warned that these must have programs were more important than acpi, etc. and was flamed for it.
linux really isn't much more practical than os/2 with openSUSE being the best for an out of the box windows replacement. we tested it for a month. not practical. a computer is merely a tool. while i agree that os/2 is the most elegent operating system in the world, it is now useless and expensive.
we replaced 24 os/2 engineering work stations mostly with Vista. we run ecs in virtual pc in the accounting department for on line banking. not a single crash or shell freeze, we're glad we dumped os/2 and aren't looking back.
we are sad to have been forced off os/2; but, we are a business and serenity isn't about keeping os/2 practical. we absolutely wish os/2 users well.
Thats what I'm talking for years. >:( It become more and more Useless and expensive. And years just passes away and nothing changed. Except ACPI ? ;)
I guess users have quite different starting points. For me eCS has become more and more useful. I think the following years will be better as quite a lot of bugs have been taken care of the latest year.
We have Open Office, Thunderbird (though I know exchanged it for PMMail), Firefox and a coming updated flashplugin. There is plenty of plugins for Net drive, eg I'm using sftp to access documents on my work. I use PMView for viewing and "light- processing" pictures and GIMP via hoblinkx11 for more heavy work on images. I use Mercury (1.9.5) for MSN. We have Smplayer for nearly all kind of videos an eg PM123 for mp3:s oggs and so on. Paul Smedley has ported and developed uniaud also for HD sound and have made a lot of other ports - eg the Scribus port for desktop publishing which seem to work great. We've had a great time with genmac although this developement maybee is ending. A lift of the desktop is eschemes, in 1.50 quite stable, though I look forward to further developement. DVD toys is also a great utility for CD-dvd burning. Well - not to forget bootable JFS developed in the last years...and the ongoing ACPI-project. I can see a quite heavy lift and developement from lets say 5,6,7 years ago..and related to resources..... what could one expect? We all know the weaknesses and what we don't have - like accelerated graphics, latest java - and access to the latest hardware but we also know why.
So for my part I can use my eCS system for most of the things I have to do, and I am happy to have a responsive system in opposite to work in a Windows based one. So if you don't need extensive multimediasupport and access to the very latest hardware I say eCS is a great choice.
Hi melf,
well - that was a good summary and viewpoint! Nice read.
Cheers
Thomas
Hi Melf,
different starting points really.
Quote from: melf on 2009.07.28, 02:24:03
So for my part I can use my eCS system for most of the things I have to do, and I am happy to have a responsive system in opposite to work in a Windows based one. So if you don't need extensive multimediasupport and access to the very latest hardware I say eCS is a great choice.
I like You use my OS for MOST of the things I have to do, but this is the My main problem. I can pretend that I do not need Google Earth, online games, pdf documents, red-eye filter for photos, bluetooth file transfer, that I do not care about my dc++ client is now unable to comunicate with 30% of windows clients, that I
do not want to copy files for my friend flash, and similar, but there is lot of things I must do, and for that I use second PC with other OS. :( For any newbie I can just say that eCS is so fast and stable OS compared to any other on Earth, that is probably ported from Alien crashed spacecraft, only problem is that You sometime need to steal hardware from local museum, and lot of things just isn't developed yet, and another year is passing away. :'(
There may be as many points of view as there are readers and users of OS/2. I say OS/2 because we are told that eCS is OS/2 but improved.
From reading this and other sites it appears that the underlying OS/2 is unchanged because the source code is unavailable. The drawback of this is the fact the kernel does need improvement.
There are few other things that need improvement like access to new network devices, IPv6 etc. ACPI, while an improvement, appears to be going backwards at the moment if the number of posts recommending backing out of the latest version to get a stable working system is anything to go by.
There are a number of things required of a modern OS. The ability to run the latest Java apps, a good flash player, support for the latest video cards etc. I leave out Acrobat reader because we have Ghost script even if it does need a better front end.
For things like Google Earth we need an update of Odin, such an update might even answer some of the other perceived needs of users. The one thing I have not seen anywhere is a list of things people would like to do with OS/2. Maybe we should compile such a list to see what people think is needed.
To start such a list here are some of the things I would like:
Update of native Java.
A better front end for Ghost Script.
An update to Odin.
Video drivers for new cards.
A native version of Open Office.
A way of using MS network card drivers - something like ndiswrapper which allows you to add a win driver on the fly.
A viewer for MS Reader e-books.
An update of the WfW input and output filters for Describe.
As a last thought I would like to see Mensys, Serenity or whoever, package the various addons they have and offer them separate to eCS so those of us using OS/2 could also use them.
Here's what I know about what you said:
Update of native Java --- Agreed. This is also critical for me.
A better front end for Ghost Script --- ghostview is the frontend. Works well for me BUT there is a shared memory leak! If you want to read pdf's Lucide works great for me.
An update to Odin ---- the flash 10 port now being done is updating Odin. Hopefully will enable more win32 programs to run
Video drivers for new cards --- Panorama is supposed to be good enough. See Panorama thread.
A native version of Open Office -- We already have this. The beta version actually works quite well. I'm using it everyday.
Don't know anything about the following:
A way of using MS network card drivers
A viewer for MS Reader e-books.
An update of the WfW input and output filters for Describe.
cytan,
I use Ghostview but it could be much better - like having the pages popup open all the time and a few other things. I keep on hearing about Lucide but it , like Panorama, the new flash 10 and Open Office, appears to be only for eCS and I have OS/2 on all my machines here and have no need to purchase eCS just to get the addons.
Now what else would you add to my list of needed items?
Quote from: ivan on 2009.07.29, 16:05:07
cytan,
I use Ghostview but it could be much better - like having the pages popup open all the time and a few other things. I keep on hearing about Lucide but it , like Panorama, the new flash 10 and Open Office, appears to be only for eCS and I have OS/2 on all my machines here and have no need to purchase eCS just to get the addons.
Now what else would you add to my list of needed items?
For ghostview: what do you mean "pages popup open all the time"? I use ghostview all the time and am pretty happy with it except for the shared memory leak.
Another thing which I really would like is to have a newer version of XFree86. Our version is just too old!
cytan
QuoteFor ghostview: what do you mean "pages popup open all the time"?
The 'Select Page' pointing finger. You select a page and the selection box closes - when you are flipping back and forward frequently in a document (e.g. a manual where you have to keep referring back to a diagram) it becomes very annoying. In that respect Acrobat reader has the advantage of the pages pane.
I agree with the XFree86, though I tend to use HobX11.
Quote from: ivan on 2009.07.29, 14:03:47
From reading this and other sites it appears that the underlying OS/2 is unchanged because the source code is unavailable. The drawback of this is the fact the kernel does need improvement.
Well, the kernel in eCS actually has been changed. It's patched at run-time to enable operation on modern CPUs.
Quote from: ivan on 2009.07.29, 14:03:47
An update of the WfW input and output filters for Describe.
I don't know who owns the rights for those. If it's the Describe owner, forget it. From what I've read about its history, the owner will never ever open source it. Anyway, the source code for those is most probably long gone.
Quote from: ivan on 2009.07.29, 14:03:47
As a last thought I would like to see Mensys, Serenity or whoever, package the various addons they have and offer them separate to eCS so those of us using OS/2 could also use them.
You've got to be kidding. Those are serious selling points for eComStation. Mensys/SSI would be shooting themselves in the foot if they made those generally available.
Christian,
QuoteYou've got to be kidding. Those are serious selling points for eComStation. Mensys/SSI would be shooting themselves in the foot if they made those generally available.
You know that, I know that but I think they might have a greater revenue stream with them alone and just sell the OS as an addon to run them. That way those that are running OS/2 can get the bells and whistles abd someone thats needs a new OS gets the OS and the bells and whistles.
Another question I have is, how are they getting round the open source license for Open Office and keeping it closed?
The answer basically is it depends on your needs (if you hadn't already guessed from the responses below). ;D
I have one XP station, and multiple OS/2 and eCS stations.
I use XP to test various websites under IE (and OS/2 and VPC to test under two other different versions of IE). I also use it for serious video editing.
I use Warp for most of my web surfing (unless I happen to already be on the XP machine doing other things).
I also use Warp for much of my transcoding. As "easy to use" as XP may be for the task (selecting menu options is much easier than command lining ffMPEG), XP is a *DOG* at doing transcodes.
Our XP system is a Dual Core 2GHz (actual clock speed) Opteron with 2GB of very fast RAM. My WSeB server is a Quad CPU Pentium III 550MHz with 4GB of PC133 RAM.
Using the same command-line options on ffMPEG, the ancient WSEB machine can transcode 4 videos (simultaneously) in the same time or less than the XP based dual Opteron does 2 videos simultaneously.
Yes, that is not a fair comparison, as XP is absolutely HORRENDOUS at doing two very CPU intensive things at once - even with two CPU cores. So WSeB has a MASSIVE advantage (XP takes *TWO to FOUR* times as long (each) to do 2 simultaneously than it does to do one - OS/2 on the other hand, does not bog down - even with the other two CPUs disabled and each (while being done simultaneously) gets completed in about 5-10% longer than one would individually; instead of XP's 2-4 times longer).
But the point is, for me, if I want to get my work done in the time frame I have (with the Star Trek Phase 2 stuff, we're often at the wire, on the release date, and I still have to do the final video transcodes of all 5 episode parts before end of day), the best solution for me is WSeB hands down - even with antiquated hardware doing the job.
Now, for some other stuff, XP is the solution I use... synchronizing my Palm, heavy video editing, web surfing to certain sites, needing hardware that is not OS/2 compatible, etc.
My hope is for one day a Firefox build based off the Linux code, as everything else Linux ported seems to outperform their comparable Windows codebase ports.
Quote from: chennecke on 2009.07.29, 17:42:38
Quote from: ivan on 2009.07.29, 14:03:47
From reading this and other sites it appears that the underlying OS/2 is unchanged because the source code is unavailable. The drawback of this is the fact the kernel does need improvement.
Well, the kernel in eCS actually has been changed. It's patched at run-time to enable operation on modern CPUs.
Quote from: ivan on 2009.07.29, 14:03:47
An update of the WfW input and output filters for Describe.
I don't know who owns the rights for those. If it's the Describe owner, forget it. From what I've read about its history, the owner will never ever open source it. Anyway, the source code for those is most probably long gone.
He can't. Read the stuff that comes with it... it is either located in the "Help" section, manual, or in the DLLs themselves - forget which. But virtually all the read/write filters were licensed from others. :(
Rob, can you run a transcode benchmark again in ffmpeg with SSE and MMX off for both machines?
Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.07.30, 00:11:57
Rob, can you run a transcode benchmark again in ffmpeg with SSE and MMX off for both machines?
I can try. I've got some encoding work to do this weekend. The bigger issue for me though is not being able to use two CPUs properly - something many such CPU intensive programs seem to have under XP. The XP machine is considerably faster (completing a transcode) when just doing a single video at a time - though the WSeB machine still comes close to halfway because it can do 4 at a time and acts almost as if each is actually being done on separate single CPU systems.
I'd kinda presumed that the newer SSE instructions and such should perform at least as well as the ancient 9 year old MMX instructions on the PIII 550's... but it is a good point. Will check it out this weekend.
I've noticed in some benchmarks that the AMD CPUs fall a little short when doing Multimedia work, especially stuff with SSE. It is one of the reasons I've never purchased an AMD machine for myself.
Hello,
You push this thread hard off topic !
But it can be relevant if any 'new Joe' interested in speed of operating system. ;)
To RoberM:
>My hope is for one day a Firefox build based off the Linux code, as everything else Linux ported seems to outperform their comparable Windows codebase ports.
OK Linux is much faster than Windows. But Linux is still way slower than OS/2 in many different task usage.
Quote from: cyber on 2009.07.30, 10:02:03
Hello,
You push this thread hard off topic !
But it can be relevant if any 'new Joe' interested in speed of operating system. ;)
Well, not so much speed as how it applies to the tasks needed. For instance (and this assumes availability of all apps (or comparable ones) on Windows and OS/2), if one runs an app or two at a time, then whatever... (at least based off this particular criteria) it doesnt really matter whether the user pics Windows or eCS. If one runs a bunch of CPU intensive apps all at once, then OS/2 would be the better choice.
Quote from: cyber on 2009.07.30, 10:02:03
To RobertM:
>My hope is for one day a Firefox build based off the Linux code, as everything else Linux ported seems to outperform their comparable Windows codebase ports.
OK Linux is much faster than Windows. But Linux is still way slower than OS/2 in many different task usage.
True... but my premise was that a Linux port under OS/2 may be faster than a Windows port of the same program under OS/2. Like someone else mentioned, there seems to be a lot of added code in various Windows versions of things and some loss of speed in the translation - and while I dont know if that applies to Firefox, it seemed possible.
Quote from: ivan on 2009.07.29, 19:59:58
Another question I have is, how are they getting round the open source license for Open Office and keeping it closed?
Pretty simple: They are
not keeping it closed. The source code is available for OOo for OS/2 is available from the OOo repository. You can try compiling it yourself. The only portion that is closed is the add-on package for WPS integration.
Quote from: RobertM on 2009.07.30, 10:20:59
True... but my premise was that a Linux port under OS/2 may be faster than a Windows port of the same program under OS/2. Like someone else mentioned, there seems to be a lot of added code in various Windows versions of things and some loss of speed in the translation - and while I dont know if that applies to Firefox, it seemed possible.
The only problem there is that the Windows versions of Firefox 3.12 and 3.51 are MUCH slower on Linux than on Windows Vista running on the same hardware, this is especially true if you keep lots of tabs open.
Quote from: oli on 2009.07.30, 20:43:15
Quote from: RobertM on 2009.07.30, 10:20:59
True... but my premise was that a Linux port under OS/2 may be faster than a Windows port of the same program under OS/2. Like someone else mentioned, there seems to be a lot of added code in various Windows versions of things and some loss of speed in the translation - and while I dont know if that applies to Firefox, it seemed possible.
The only problem there is that the Windows versions of Firefox 3.12 and 3.51 are MUCH slower on Linux than on Windows Vista running on the same hardware, this is especially true if you keep lots of tabs open.
Hmmm... so the Linux port is based off the Windows code as well? I didnt know that. But yeah, that's basically the same problem I am complaining about under OS/2. FF on OS/2 is a dog in comparison to FF on Windows.
Some of that though, I still think has to do with how it renders HTML (there are a bunch of posts someplace in these forums by me and others regarding this... seems the high number of redrawing does not work well (at least in the method implemented) under OS/2). Cairo seems to have improved that a lot, but it is still far from fast. This is particularly cumbersome for me when it comes to a lot of apps that I write that have tabular data - using... tables (for what they are now claimed as intended for). Pre-specifying widths and heights helps, but also doesnt always work properly with "random" data being pulled from a big database where one may instead need the table to be able to "auto-adjust" a few columns based on their content.
Regardless, that would not solve the problems on other similar sites where I dont have access to the code.
Ahem.
http://www.tuxradar.com/content/browser-benchmarks-2-even-wine-beats-linux-firefox
If you want to see a good example of PMSHELL re-draw rape under OS/2, load the "My Ebay" page. It takes sometimes in excess of 20s to render on OS/2 in Firefox.
3-5s in WinXP, 3-5s in XFCE Debian.
I was browsing the source comments and Trak for the OS/2 Firefox build and I believe the maintainer found the possible culprit code. I have to see if I can find the comment I'm thinking of..
Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.07.31, 00:27:20
I was browsing the source comments and Trak for the OS/2 Firefox build and I believe the maintainer found the possible culprit code. I have to see if I can find the comment I'm thinking of..
LoL... I've been following those threads since FF 2.0 till about 8 months ago (when I gave up on hoping for a fix) and they keep seeming to think they have found the culprit code (nothing against them, I can
definitely understand how such a thing can be a daunting task).
As a matter of fact, I was one of the people who traced it to the redraw requests and emailed the porters with the information that helped them down that path. Hopefully this time they are correct and figure out how to resolve it. Am very interested in the new thread you found.
Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.07.31, 00:27:20
Ahem.
http://www.tuxradar.com/content/browser-benchmarks-2-even-wine-beats-linux-firefox
Brings up an interesting question as to whether FF3 will run under Odin (especially with the updates to Odin for the Flash plugin that I hope we all see).
Oh, this was quite an old comment. I believe it was dated some time in 2007 or so. I really hope we see a release of the updated ODIN code and possibly a migration to meld with WINE or ReactOS.
Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.07.31, 00:51:28
Oh, this was quite an old comment. I believe it was dated some time in 2007 or so. I really hope we see a release of the updated ODIN code and possibly a migration to meld with WINE or ReactOS.
Last I read, Cairo was supposed to fix or alleviate the issue. Sadly, not quite (though it does seem somewhat better).
Guys, thanks for the active thread and exchange of ideas. BUT... as a programming illiterate, I'm having a hard time following this, as it seems to have veered from my original question. I'm willing to be a tad flexible and change some of my habits to accomodate this system's quirks, but the best I can make of this thread is that... (best case scenario) I should wait to see how good 2.0 (and possibly any follow-up fixes/upgrades) is when it gets released, and then make an informed decision if it's ready for average Joe computer users. Worst case scenario seems to be move on to Linux and leave eCS to its core group of supporters.
Am I off with this interpretation? Seems a shame because I was actually interested in buying an eCS loaded computer!
G
Quote from: Grackle on 2009.07.24, 15:54:33
..a system that won't let me down/lose information, dodges most viruses and hacks out there, and lets me go about my daily routine without fanfare....I was thinking eCS. Blondeguy has been very cool in this regard, and if I am to get a eCS laptop, it'll likely be one of his pre-loaded systems, but I'll ask the board-- can a computer illiterate like me (one who's used to 100% compatibility) live with eCS, and will I be able to use it with zero changes in my daily routine? This means using a wireless mouse (never could get the hang of a touchpad) surfing the web, playing music (i.e. visiting Last.fm, buying and playing MP3's), watching videos and movies online, writing, sending, receiving and printing documents and spreadsheets -- you know, normal duffer stuff.
Hi, Grackle
For everyday work eCS is a perfect system. If you read my earlier posting you probably saw that opinion shining through. Those things you mention in your first posting, quoted above, is such everyday work I'm doing from my eCS 2.0 RC5 system installed on an Acer one. (To watch movies you may have to wait a few months for the flash 10 plugin, but the flash 7 works e.g. for most youtube-videos.) What I like with eCS is that it is a responsive system, it is free from a lot of system messages and after a while you'll find it easy and reliable to use - you'll be addicted :-). If you bye a preinstalled system, well.. then you don't have to bother about hardware. What are you waiting for..go for it!
From a subjective point of view
/Mikael
Grackle, I can sometimes be an avid supporter or a detractor of eCS.
I'll say this:
The WPS is unique, and has a very nice level of functionality. eCS is very responsive when an app does not decide to hang. In some cases, this can mean a hard reboot of the machine. A little annoying.
We do not have the greatest breadth of available applications, but most of what we do have run well. The Qt4 port will likely alleviate much of this gap.
It is basically completely useless for any media production and editing. Many will argue, but we lack up to date codecs for just about every file container and compression method, we have no good GUI apps for editing Video (audio somewhat better, but still outdated) and our photo editing suites are basically photo opening/closing suites. Nothing approaching the power of Photoshop/Corel Painter/ Paint.net. This can sort of be worked around using Xfree86 and GIMP or HoblinkX and Gimp but the GIMP versions are very oudated and Xfree86 has issues with Panorama Video driver.
It has limited support for non-Postscript printers and scanners and this can be a pain in the ass if you don't want to buy new hardware JUST to print and scan photos.
Firewire support is non existent, so no miniDV editing capability.
Firefox draws painfully slow, Flash is outdated (Flash 10 soon, but really I can't trust "soon" with these people any more), and no news of a modern Java Virtual Machine.
I'd caution you to try it first before you invest so as to avoid souring yourself to the OS which is just in a strange transitional state right now.
Hi again,
just some small objections to sajin_naibs posting. Didn't recognize the description of FF as slow so made some random tests. Tried about ten random and uncashed webplaces. I put a "random" word in Google an surfed one at a time by Ctrl + Enter the ten first hits. Approximatyely the time to "Done" was 4 seconds. No differens if using FF in Windows (FF3.0.12) or in eCS (FF2.0.0.20 Peter W's). Both browsers was using flashblock. [On Acer Aspire One - eCS2.0RC5 vs WinXP-SP3].
About pictures: PMView certainly do more than open-close (!) GIMP through hoblink11 is ver 2.2.8 from 2005. Works seamlessly in eCS. "Outdated" but does much work; many many filters, effects and of course using layers. Queency is also an advanced image processing program and there is also a couple of Java programs still working with Java 1.4.2_09.
Queency is very unstable and not exactly feature rich, but is serviceable.
Try a page like Ebay's My Summary page which is heavy on AJAX and images and tell me it draws as fast as Linux/OSX/Windows Firefox. If the tab/window does not have focus (or is minimized) the slow drawing is not so much of an issue. Let the tab in question keep focus and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.08.03, 00:21:27
Queency is very unstable and not exactly feature rich, but is serviceable.
Try a page like Ebay's My Summary page which is heavy on AJAX and images and tell me it draws as fast as Linux/OSX/Windows Firefox. If the tab/window does not have focus (or is minimized) the slow drawing is not so much of an issue. Let the tab in question keep focus and you'll see what I'm talking about.
I've been doing some Ajax programming and testing (and play with Facebook a lot). Ajax is not the problem.
Also, the problem is more noticeable depending on video card. VESA only support and it is like pulling teeth. It is also more noticeable on pages with either (a) poor layouts, or (b) layout elements that cannot be pre-defined (either of which cause lotsa redraws to re-adjust content position - the less supported the video card, the slower it becomes under OS/2).
Sadly, the use of Panorama and Shadow Buffering will become more and more common as SNAP chipsets die and become more rare. I've noticed a marked decrease in performance when I switched to my 7600gt (Panorama) from my FX5500 (SNAP) but neither rendered as fast as Win/OSX/Linux.
If AJAX is not the problem, why are AJAX heavy pages so much slower to render under OS/2?
Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.08.03, 01:01:07
Sadly, the use of Panorama and Shadow Buffering will become more and more common as SNAP chipsets die and become more rare. I've noticed a marked decrease in performance when I switched to my 7600gt (Panorama) from my FX5500 (SNAP) but neither rendered as fast as Win/OSX/Linux.
If AJAX is not the problem, why are AJAX heavy pages so much slower to render under OS/2?
I believe you are mistaking DHTML portion of pages and such that use Ajax as a method to retrieve the updates - with Ajax itself, which is only a concept that does a certain end result. All of the code that actually does the updating, maintenance and rebuilding of pages is standard Javascript, CSS and HTML. Nothing more or less.
Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.08.03, 00:21:27
Queency is very unstable and not exactly feature rich, but is serviceable.
Try a page like Ebay's My Summary page which is heavy on AJAX and images and tell me it draws as fast as Linux/OSX/Windows Firefox. If the tab/window does not have focus (or is minimized) the slow drawing is not so much of an issue. Let the tab in question keep focus and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Hi saijin,
no it doesn't draw as fast as in windows on this page. It differs 3 s for me to "done".
I also did a new try on with pages focused, five other randomes pages. On three pages FF on windows was a second before, on one FF on eCS was a second before on the last time was the same. Not especially scientific but there is no big and clear difference as I can see. Would be interesting with more thorough tests.
I have worked in two IT departments and have owned my own computer store for years. I really got fed up with Windows, so I just made the jump myself. Don't really miss Windows at all.
That was two weeks ago. It's working out pretty good.
Good for you Michael Henry.
I agree with posters that say that multi-media editing is more limited than other platforms, that video drawing can be slower, that pretty much everything is slower. I could think of quite a few more cases like that. If any of those are important to you, I support your use of a platform that works better for you.
For many users, these differences are meaningless. I often give my eCS machine to people who have never seen eCS or OS/2, and it mostly works for them. I can do a lot with eCS. If I really get stuck for something, I can borrow a Mac or Windows machine for a little while.
If you want to try something a little different, why not eCS? If you don't like it you can switch back.
What is my principle selling point? eCS is adequate for most needs, and it isn't Mac, Linux or Windows.
Neil
Yes this is completely different. I have a very strong background in Windows, a little Mac, and a semi-strong background in Linux (My favorite was Linspire, but the negative attitude towards it from Linux users was surprising considering that it just worked, not with small things but every machine I put it on). I have an associate degree in Networking. I have installed Windows(DOS) from 3.x to XP over 1000 times. I have built hundreds of computers to run Windows in various forms.
I am not saying this to brag. I am saying this to underscore a point. Yes, eComstation doesn't work out of the box. (Licensing issues can be a pain, so I don't blame Serenity or Mensys) After finding the extras I need, I can now do everything but print. (eCups doesn't support Lexmark x2500, a cheap all-in-one I purchased to print my sermons, and Linux doesn't support it either). I have dug my older Brother laser printer out, which Cups supported when I used Linspire, so that should take care of that.
What does this mean? It means that with a few modifications, it is working for me. There are some simple accounting options available, I am testing them to see which one fits my needs. I don't do very much picture work, so the "Older" Gimp will work just fine. Scribus, I used under Windows and Linux, which was a strong point because I do design church bulletins, newsletters, etc. and with Scribus, the transition was easier. My office work was already in OOo, so that was easy.
My main reason for scrubbing Windows was viruses, rootkits, trojans, and the constant need to keep up with security issues. I had a customer, an older gentleman btw, some years ago that hit some porn sites, got infected badly, and NO program we threw at it resolved it. We nuked and paved it, got everything up and going, ordered two commercial programs (AVG antivirus, before they did spyware and Sunbelt Software's Counterspy). The NEXT day he came in with the same issue. In one night, he had hit about forty to fifty porn sites and started to cause a commotion because we were not good enough to prevent it. Antivirus and antispyware are like the flu shot, just because you have them, doesn't mean you are not going to get infected. A month ago, I got a rootkit out of a pdf ebook that I downloaded. Surprise, because I didn't keep up with the news, Adobe Reader has a flaw that also went into the plugin of Firefox. Sigh. After fighting it for several weeks, I jumped ships, hard.
I use Linux today on two of my laptops. As soon as I get the feel of eComstation, my main laptop will go over to eCS. The other, I dunno, might keep it for workorders or install XP in a Virtual Drive under eCS.
Don't get me wrong, I like Ubuntu, et. all. I like the available programs, the stability, XFCE, KDE, etc. What I don't like is the putdowns toward newbies, the putdowns to Christians, the supposed excellent FREE, tech support that evaporates (and when companies sell tech support, the Linux fanbase get their ninnies in a wad and complain, gripe, like no one is entitled to make a living).
To make a successful transition, make a note on what you use, what you REALLY use, not the oddball application that hey it's free, cool, etc, that you downloaded once upon a time, used it once or twice but hey I NEED that. Don't make that your deal breaker.
Then think about the total cost of ownership. The need for support is REAL. The bigger companies charge out their noses for support while shareware and smaller companies for the most part love to hear from their customers. I have had a shareware or open source author bend over backwards to help me, regardless whether there was a transaction behind it. Also, the ongoing cost for updates, security programs (which considering the change in the kernel of Vista, Microsoft will be the market leader before too long and that's irony). So, if you don't have a license or an original product, there goes that support out the proverbial windows ;D.
And finally, when you do make a decision, whether to stay or leave, either way, be careful about newsgroups and BBSs. While they are great, there will always be toads there to mock you about something or the other. I have been on newsgroups and BBSs for over twenty years, so yes it does happen.
And last but not least make the decision for yourself, not anyone else.
With all those picture editing application miss relating posts... I only need red eye reduction on OS/2. For anything else, there is bunch of really good native graphic applications, like ColorWorks, Embelish, Photo Tiger, and Pixel (last one I try only in demo mode). So I do not understand what really You all other complain about photo editing ? I often use just PMview, because gama/contrast/brightness/ picture resize, is only process I usually need.
But as red-eye filter is adopted in to-do PMview list, I do not see what else could anyone miss with still images ?
Quote from: cyber on 2009.08.10, 10:00:45
I only need red eye reduction on OS/2.
Red eye reduction on PMView wpould be great, but if you want it NOW, you should try GBM-viewer (gbmv2.exe)
It's a picture viewer based on the general bitmap module. Look here http://heikon.home.tlink.de/. Choose "Download" and download GBM PM (1.53) As it said you also have to download the GBM package (1.63). gbmv2.exe is placed in the map GBMOS2PM153_BIN\gbmos2pm\bin.en (or bin.de) I had some hard time finding it. You can see the effect below.
Quote from: cyber on 2009.08.10, 10:00:45
With all those picture editing application miss relating posts... I only need red eye reduction on OS/2. For anything else, there is bunch of really good native graphic applications, like ColorWorks, Embelish, Photo Tiger, and Pixel (last one I try only in demo mode). So I do not understand what really You all other complain about photo editing ? I often use just PMview, because gama/contrast/brightness/ picture resize, is only process I usually need.
But as red-eye filter is adopted in to-do PMview list, I do not see what else could anyone miss with still images ?
You could try FaxView. It's part of the Tame/2 scanning solution.
Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.07.30, 00:11:57
Rob, can you run a transcode benchmark again in ffmpeg with SSE and MMX off for both machines?
OK... here's what I got percentage wise. Two transcode on a dual core XP machine take 1.57 times longer (each) than one. They should take nearly the same amount of time.
Four transcodes on a 4 CPU OS/2 machine take 1.06 times as long (each) as one. Or inotherwords, Windows XP seems to be getting 63% CPU utilization each transcode compared to one ffMPEG process running, which is only using 50% of the total CPU power - inotherwords, 1 CPU for that one monolithic process. OS/2 WSeB on the other hand is getting 94% utilization out of it's CPUs compared to using one CPU for one transcode.
OS/2 did not have the advantage here either, as I shut down the (always needed) Antivirus and Antispyware software (and everything else) on the XP box - something no one in their right mind would do with an Internet connected XP machine... while on the other hand, the OS/2 box was running an active web server (relatively highly active with a peak connection count of 71 simultaneous connections - most requiring MySQL access), MySQL (which besides the web server daemon access, was being accessed every 10 seconds from the monitoring station for server and pageload updates), FTPd (always active for post production work for the Star Trek Phase 2 (http://www.startreknewvoyages.com) team), Weasel mail server (intermittently active) and rebuilding it's SCSI RAID 1E array. Yet still, OS/2 utilizes multiple CPUs far better. I have a feeling that Vista would perform even worse (but that is just a feeling based on use and not on testing).
Windows XP just does not seem nearly as good at using multiple CPU cores. I get similar results when rendering under Blender and using too many threads. Even on a machine with a much faster bus and memory.
Very interesting.
Now, do you have an eCS install you could use on the XP machine's hardware? I am suspicious of the performance difference between Intel and AMD processors and how that would factor into this equation.
Comparing two different hardware platforms though interesting, invalidates any results you get from this comparison.
Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.08.16, 15:36:32
Very interesting.
Now, do you have an eCS install you could use on the XP machine's hardware? I am suspicious of the performance difference between Intel and AMD processors and how that would factor into this equation.
Comparing two different hardware platforms though interesting, invalidates any results you get from this comparison.
I would assume it would invalidate the test... except you forget, the OS/2 machine had a measly 100MHz bus. Not the whoppingly 8x faster bus of the XP machine. And of course, the memory is also equally skewed: 133MHz EDO RAM compared to DDR2-800MHz memory on a bus that is designed for that speed memory) - and of course, the XP machine supposedly has a wider bus (CPU and board).
So yes, it should invalidate the test - in XP's favor.
I will see if I can get the eCS boot CD working on the machine and see what results that gets in comparison. That though, may be horrendously skewed in XPs favor as I
may be limited to using a FAT32 partition for the tests...
Well, this thread has involved many pertubations, but my straight up ans is NO! Why bother with any OS except Warp Server with Websphere...unless of course its Plan9... >:(
Wow, has it been not-quite 2 years since I started this thread? Time flies, but rest assured, I have continued to lurk on this site.
After reading all of the replies above and following the news, I decided to wait it out at least for eCS V. 2.0, and its early upgrades-- my Dell is still buggy as can be, but its Vista has been replaced with the marginally better Win 7, but I still would like to try eCS. So I go back to the original question-- is this ready for Joe Schmoe consumer, a guy like me with negligible computer programming skills, who needs things like Flash, Skype (I live in Europe and this is my primary means of international communication), MS Office, easy access to printers and so forth. I have a copywriting/technical writing and consulting business here, and these are the things I need on my computer that are absolutely non-negotiable. I see from the articles and feedback that eCS has indeed come a long way from 2009... but is it ready for early adopter non-technical people, or is it still (by-and-large) an OS for a core group of computer experts? Should I wait for upcoming builds of eCS? Move on to something a bit more my speed? Please advise-- and a VERY belated thanks to all who chimed in with their excellent answers the first time around!
G
Quoteis this ready for Joe Schmoe consumer, a guy like me with negligible computer programming skills, who needs things like Flash, Skype (I live in Europe and this is my primary means of international communication), MS Office, easy access to printers and so forth.
Since you seem to think you need windows only software, no, eCS will not do what you seem to think that you need. However:
Flash - there is a buggy beta 10 version, so far. It is still being worked on, but needs more funding. There is MediaDownloader that will download FLASH files, and then you can play most of them in SMPLAYER/MPLAYER.
Skype - Not much hope that this will ever work with eCS, unless you can convince Microsoft (they apparently bought Skype) to release the source, or port it themselves (yeah, right).
MS Office - Open Office 3.2 is available (comes with eCS 2.0 and later). It is not 100% compatible, but does a good job. It is still missing the JAVA connection, but that should be corrected when JAVA 1.6 is finished (still needs more funding).
Printer support is now done with eCUPS, which has some serious limitations, but works well with supported printers. You do need to carefully select your printers.
You also need to carefully select your system hardware, or you will likely need to take a crash course in being a technical person.
The bottom line is, that eCS is still trying to catch up, but if you insist on using Microsoft software, you don't have any hope of getting it to work with eCS. If you are willing to do some work to install eCS (which may require some technical expertise), and then find software that will do what you need to do, and learn how to use it, you can probably switch to eCS. If you are not willing to do that, you might as well suffer with Win7. You can always keep an old system around to run things like Skype.
My suggestion, if you really want to use eCS, would be to buy a preloaded system from one of the companies who sell preloaded systems. If you also get a printer from them, it will probably work. Add OpenOffice to handle the MS Office stuff that you need to handle, and ask for specific suggestions about what software to use for other things.
Hope this helps...