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eCS 2.0 GA - first details

Started by warpcafe, 2010.05.06, 16:17:50

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warpcafe

Hi all,

I wasn't sure in which forum to put this, so please bear with me if this is the wrong one.
I have submitted the German version of this 2 days ago to os2.org and have decided to -sigh- ;) make the effort and do a translation of it here:

On Tuesday, Roderick Klein from Mensys called me for a chat over the phone and passed some first facts to me about the GA version of eCS 2.0. In short:

1)
The GA version will ship with Thunderbird2 (.??) and Firefox 3.5.7 that will come with preconfigured run! scripts for them to ease coexsistence.

2)
Special attention was paid to make 2.0 install flawlessly over existing installations, especially with regards to version information of ACPI drivers. In contrast to common criticism, that one would rather do clean installs of 2.0 than upgrade some "crappy old RC", they did not focus on clean new installs but rather take care of clean migrations.

3)
With Uniaud (-16), the new developer in charge actually managed to fix all known open bugs filed until to date... within the last two weeks.  And "fixing bugs" actually means to resolve the issues before closing the tickets (in contrast to what the previous developer apparently did). As a consequence, Mensys decided to block access to the code repository for -cough- some of the previous maintainers -cough- to mitigate the risk of having them bringing their crappy code back in.

4)
Multiple stages of verification were introduced with the ACPI driver packaging in order to ensure that not only the package release numbers increase with new version, but rather the included files aren't backlevel artifacts from wrong packaging. The latter -as I can confirm out of personal painful experience- seemed to be happening frequently over in "saintpetersborough" with folks testing their installations rather from a file replacement point of view and forgetting about the endusers way of installing things.Well, anyway, they seem to be very skilled marketing guys but the end user is rather seen as someone having a need for colorful launchpads. Sorry for being OT, back to topic:

5)
JFS, in its shipping flavor, will come with a truinkload of fixes. Also, a lot of improvements occurred in the area of LVM and its usage for partioning during the installation phase.

6)
Currently, CD2 is being packaged. By the way - it will also include a Clam-based antivirus client. I have to admit that I don't see the reason behind this, but that just my 2 cents... perhaps someone around here will rather appreciate this decision.
CD1 (the installation CD) is currently being finalized from a contents point of view. Anyone following the eCS-cvs-tweets at twitter will certainly confirm that quite some things are going on here, so that I can hardly judge whether or not the final installation CD will perhaps be crafted at the Mensys booth at Warpstock Europe 2010 ;)
Or perhaps, like with WSE2008 in Düsseldorf, it will be Team Trier burning eCS CDs again? That would at least perfectly fit into the picture since Team Trier is organizing this year's Warpstock Europe edition ;)

Okay, that's it for the moment guys (an gals). Hope you'll enjoy fighting pro and con the above stuff. I do not know if they will prepare a demo-CD soon or whether they plan to have USB-bootability in mind. I'll check back with Roderick next time I'll find him equally talkative to last Tuesday :)

(Roderick, if you see this and something is not accurate -or simply wrong- feel free to chip in for clarification... other than that, thanks for sharing some news with us!)

Cheers
Thomas
"It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority.
By definition, there are already enough people to do that"
- G.H. Hardy

lewhoo

Anyone knows if they fixed the issue of needing to install BootManager in order to install ECS on a non-primary partition? It was quite irritating, for I use other bootmanager and it ment installing BM, removing it, resizing the partition...

CDRWSel

Having got several java script viruses and other kind of win32 virus into email, having ClamAV is a good idea and addition.
Cheers/2
RD 

Saijin_Naib

1) Nice to hear, but these versions don't have the OS/2 render improvements of the latest branch and will be slow :(

2) Glad to hear migrations work. However, clean install process is still not "easy" on many configurations especially where LVM info does not already exist.

3) Glad to hear Uniaud got some serious code re-work done and has improved. Usually worked well for me though.

4) Never had issues with the ACPI *.wpi packages but I also never checked too deep into it.

5) Sounds like only good things :)

6) AV is always a nice touch, glad to see it included.

------------
Want news on USB Flash drive boot/install, also news on friendliness with SSDs (Aligning Partition/Volume/Filesystem to disk structure to decrease IO load and improve disk performance), and finally, AHCI support.

There is more stuff but that list are the deal-breakers for me right this momment.

Pete

Hi

1) Is not of any interest here whichever versions are supplied as I much prefer Seamonkey myself.

2) I'll have to see if ecs migration works as well as my trick of using wps2rexx to create cmd files of the existing Desktop which can then be used to recreate most app installations on the new Desktop without reinstalling.

3) Be interesting to see if the new uniaud developer has fixed uniaud so that it works. I must admit to doubts here.

4) ACPI - wonder if that actually works yet? The higher the acpi build numbers got the less chance of acpi working here; v3.14 was the last build that came close to working. I'm currently using OS2APIC.PSD with an updated loader from the "illegal"(?) os4 kernel package in preference to ACPI on my system using nForce430/MCP61 chipset because it works much better than acpi v3.14

5) JFS fixes and improvements usually welcome - as long as they work  :-)

6) AV may be useful in preventing your "immune to WinVirii" system from accidentally passing WinVirii to Win Boxes.

Regards

Pete


Saijin_Naib

Actually Point 1 should be relevant to you Pete as SeaMonkey still uses the same rendering engine as Firefox and Thunderbird. You are not experiencing the render speed improvements that have been made in the OS/2 branch of the 3.7 firefox port. I hope the author makes these improvements across Thunderbird/SeaMonkey as well later.

Pete

Hi Saijin_Naib

I use Seamonkey V2 (currently 2.0.4) which uses the much the same browser code as Firefox 3.5/3.6

As you claim the render speed with Firefox 3.7 is that much better I'll look forward to the 3.7 code getting into Sm, hopefully for V2.05/2.06  :-)


However, the point was that the builds of Firefox and Thunderbird included with eCS are not relevant to me - even if they were the very latest/fastest/most stable - as I do not use those apps.

Regards

Pete




RobertM

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2010.05.07, 01:14:27
Actually Point 1 should be relevant to you Pete as SeaMonkey still uses the same rendering engine as Firefox and Thunderbird. You are not experiencing the render speed improvements that have been made in the OS/2 branch of the 3.7 firefox port. I hope the author makes these improvements across Thunderbird/SeaMonkey as well later.

Actually, I believe releasing an ALPHA version of the browser would not be a good business decision for Mensys and Serenity.


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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Fahrvenugen

I'm guessing part of the reasoning behind Firefox 3.5.7 is that it still works with the Java plugin.  As has been reported, newer builds of Firefox won't work with this plugin.




warpcafe

Hi,

@Fahrvenugen: Exactly!

@Pete: They will include a Seamonkey 2.xx on CD#2... not sure about the detailed version though.

Cheers,
Thomas
"It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority.
By definition, there are already enough people to do that"
- G.H. Hardy

StefanZ

Q: Will GA version include also the updated (quick) version of Panorama VESA drivers?

klipp

Hey Thomas! Another Seamonkey user here, thanks for the input. Any chance of a working Flash 10 being included?

Thanks to you & Rodrick for the feedback.   klipp
********************************************************************
Windoz Free! eCS 2.0 serving Linux, Windoz & OS2
rklipp@megared.net.mx
********************************************************************

aschn

Quote from: lewhoo on 2010.05.06, 17:16:10
Anyone knows if they fixed the issue of needing to install BootManager in order to install ECS on a non-primary partition?

Not yet. It's probably on the to-do list, but most likely there's no-one working on that.

aschn

Quote from: klipp on 2010.05.07, 21:48:48
Any chance of a working Flash 10 being included?

Unfortunately, not yet. It looks like they will provide stuff like that with updates/patches. (And I support to release 2.0 as soon as possible.)

chennecke

Quote from: StefanZ on 2010.05.07, 12:44:51
Q: Will GA version include also the updated (quick) version of Panorama VESA drivers?

As far as I know yes.