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Free eComStation Virtual Machine

Started by miturbide, 2012.01.13, 22:09:49

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Free of charge eComStation Virtual Machine?

Good Idea
10 (83.3%)
Bad Idea
2 (16.7%)

Total Members Voted: 0

Pete

Hi jdeb

I seem to recall that the Purchase of eCS includes a period of Software Subscription - either 6 months or 1 year - so is not an extra cost on top of the OS purchase initially.

However, looking at the Mensys site I do not see that information displayed so maybe that has changed...

Maybe someone else can clarify this - or you could email mensys and ask if the purchase price includes Software Subscription.


As regards watching video online I suspect you are talking about Flash support. I do not have Flash installed myself so if I really want to watch a particular Flash video I download it and use a current media player - vlc or smplayer(mplayer) to playback the video.

As I understand it Flash support is currently being worked on and, I'm told, is improving. Maybe there will be a Flash10/11 GA sometime soon.

However, some websites are catching up with the times and offer video via HTML5 which works fine - unless the video is h264 encoded which Mozilla products do not and will not support. In which case it is back to downloading a copy of the video - but this is a Mozilla browser problem rather than OS.


ACPI support: Seems to be finally moving forward now that a new developer has taken over. Hopefully there will be a GA of this software soon.


Regards

Pete


Sigurd

#16
Quote from: miturbide on 2012.01.16, 16:32:58
Quote from: Sigurd on 2012.01.16, 09:11:05
=> attracting new customers is almost impossible once the Driver Problems are not solved. "New" customers I think will most likely be those, that have OS/2 running since 10 years or more and need to have new hardware now.

Hi Sigurd. I share the need that we have of more drivers for the platform.

The only thing that I want to correct, is that the goal of this hypothetical idea is not to attract new "customers". Since I'm more community oriented I want to attract more "users/developers" to the community. It is possible that as a consequence of releasing a free of charge VM it may get more customers.

I think that providing a free of charge eCS VM with preinstalled user and development tools will help to get more "community members" on board of this platform.


Hi Martin,

sorry for leaving the focus ( Hm - this seems to happen quite often with me...) - and I forgott to mention - I think it is really a good idea to present a "free of charge VM" ! It may let more people realize that there is still something like eCS - OS/2 around and one is at least able to play with it a bit. I think this might be very interesting for all those, who already left this road of OS/2 some years ago.

Keep on going with your good ideas!!

Sigurd

P.S.: To overcome the driver problem, the beginning last year I tried to get an OS/2 Warp 4 VM in Virtualbox to run. My approach was to start a basis Linux system that first served all the Hardware (LAN, WLAN, USB ...) and second automatically starts Virtualbox with the OS/2 Warp 4 inside. I finished the VM of Warp 4 and installed it in Ubuntu Linux on a USB Stick. It was really astonishing for me to boot the Linux Stick on 4 different PCs, one a notebook, and inside the VM I was able to use the usually by OS/2 unsupported WLAN Hardware etc with OS/2 Warp 4 (the same with Sound as the VM used Soundblaster 16, regardless what real Soundharware was presented)! But I did not manage to get it to run in the way, that the VM started automatically. I found a place in the net where this procedure was decribed, but because of the lack of "No programming skills" I did not get it to work.

I wrote a lot here (sorry, please use onlinetranslator as it is in German) http://www.commtalk.org/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showthreaded.pl?Cat=1,3,16&Board=os2softprojects&Number=78639&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5

And it looked like this: http://www.commtalk.org/FileRepository/ForumAttachments/99-78779-Warp218.png

jdeb

Quote from: Pete on 2012.01.16, 16:38:41
Hi jdeb

I seem to recall that the Purchase of eCS includes a period of Software Subscription - either 6 months or 1 year - so is not an extra cost on top of the OS purchase initially.

However, looking at the Mensys site I do not see that information displayed so maybe that has changed...

Maybe someone else can clarify this - or you could email mensys and ask if the purchase price includes Software Subscription.


As regards watching video online I suspect you are talking about Flash support. I do not have Flash installed myself so if I really want to watch a particular Flash video I download it and use a current media player - vlc or smplayer(mplayer) to playback the video.

As I understand it Flash support is currently being worked on and, I'm told, is improving. Maybe there will be a Flash10/11 GA sometime soon.

However, some websites are catching up with the times and offer video via HTML5 which works fine - unless the video is h264 encoded which Mozilla products do not and will not support. In which case it is back to downloading a copy of the video - but this is a Mozilla browser problem rather than OS.


ACPI support: Seems to be finally moving forward now that a new developer has taken over. Hopefully there will be a GA of this software soon.


Regards

Pete



Yes when I purchased it came with a 6 month software subscription which is nice. I really have no problem with the flash video issue but I can see potential new users having one.

Good to know about the ACPI support. I can get it to work but it is not stable. I think it may be a BIOS setting but I have not really dived into it. The "BIOS tips" text file off are a start but have not got around to it.

I may have sounded a little harsh but I think honesty is the best policy. With that being said, I love eCS and I can not believe how much I missed it, especially the templates.  I love open office and Scribus. Even running at single core, 2gb of RAM it is blazing fast.

Quote
I would be interested in where find Win 7 for $99

In the US, Newegg has the builders license (OEM) for $99.00 every day. The only difference from the retail is that it does not have support.  
Foxconn P41A-P, Intel E7500, 2 GB DDR2 800, ATI X300, ADATA Sata II 64 GB SSD, 160GB WD Sata II HD, Intel Pro 100/1000, Antec Basiq 350W PS, Antec 300 Case, ECS 2.1

os2monkey

Well hopefully i'm this discussion is not considered too old to reopen but I just noticed it.
Regarding:
Quote from: miturbide on 2012.01.13, 22:09:49

But Mensys has a business selling eCS licenses, so this free of charge VM will need to have some rules or limitations:

  • "As Is". Do no expect formal support or custom bugfix for this version.
  • Only to run on a Virtual Machine, no real hardware allowed
  • For personal use only, no corporate or business use allowed.
But don't waist resources trying to block by software this limitations, this should a user license limitation. 

Well I think we would get many more hobbyists involved with the OS for sure.. but maybe it would be like giving away the farm to do so, if provided 100% free..
I would think many people would opt to not buy commercial licenses when they can get away with using a free resource, so it would cause mensys & serenity to lose business.

Personally I would think it would be better to offer a low cost virtual machine license (maybe it could actually be delivered as a virtualbox image so you could not easily install it on native hardware), something like $25-35 maybe, and maybe a discount on the full license if they decide later to upgrade to running a full license on native hardware.
People also feel more committed to a product when they have to pay something to get it, while still giving a lower cost of entry for people who are not yet 100% sure or just exploring.

My 2 cents anyway :).




Joop

Quote from: jdeb on 2012.01.16, 18:01:06
In the US, Newegg has the builders license (OEM) for $99.00 every day. The only difference from the retail is that it does not have support.  
That's a crippled version of Windows, not the full pack. The full pack for Windows 7 is here $362. Next, I don't like to upgrade about every week because they fixed again something. Windows 7 is not an OS but more a virus. An OS serves what the client want's, Windows 7 want's that the client serves. Its a small tweak.

Joop

jdeb

Quote from: Joop on 2012.02.26, 13:25:06
Quote from: jdeb on 2012.01.16, 18:01:06
In the US, Newegg has the builders license (OEM) for $99.00 every day. The only difference from the retail is that it does not have support.  
That's a crippled version of Windows, not the full pack. The full pack for Windows 7 is here $362. Next, I don't like to upgrade about every week because they fixed again something. Windows 7 is not an OS but more a virus. An OS serves what the client want's, Windows 7 want's that the client serves. Its a small tweak.

Joop

There is no difference from a technical standpoint. The only difference is the retail editions provide Microsoft technical support by phone, and are able to be moved to a different machine, and they come in the pretty packaging.
Foxconn P41A-P, Intel E7500, 2 GB DDR2 800, ATI X300, ADATA Sata II 64 GB SSD, 160GB WD Sata II HD, Intel Pro 100/1000, Antec Basiq 350W PS, Antec 300 Case, ECS 2.1