Submitted by We’re already nine days into the year 2010, and yet, eComStation 2.0 has not yet been released. The final release should’ve been released before the end of 2009, but December 31 came, and no release. Luckily, the eComStation team has released a statement, saying that the final release is definitely around the corner.
Despite not having been able to release the final version of eComStation 2.0, the team behind the continuation of OS/2 state that a lot of progress has been made in 2009. They claim that the last test release, eComStation 2.0 RC7 Silver, has been very well received.
“Since eComStation 1.2R over 900 bugs have been resolved and a lot of new features have been introduced, the most important being the support for modern hardware with ACPI, multi-core CPUs and the Panorama video driver,” the statement reads, “Other new features include the Bootable JFS filesystem, a major overhaul of the preboot menu, Samba network support including a neat GUI and the list goes on.”
The final release is just around the corner, and they’ve made it their new year’s resolution to get it to users as soon as possible.
“The code is very well advanced and we are currently working on the documentation as well as pricing for purchase and upgrade for those who did not take out a Software Support Subscription,” they further explain, “We intend to have some attractive pricing for purchase of multiple copies, so as to help those of you that wish to run eCS 2.0 on multiple machines within your household.”
I reviewed the first release candidate of eComStation 2.0 way back in June 2007 (!), so a final release would be kind of nice.
I don’t really know why the current eCS 2.0 rc7 is not considered GA. It is at least as stable as the last GA, eCS 1.2, and for me, all important features are included. Of course it is my main system.
Yes !!!! Let’s Release it SOON !!!! Came on Mensys/Serenity !!!
but if there is one thing that annoys the heck out of me, its less popular operating systems that exaggerate their capabilities while diminishing those of the more popular ones.
They should update their website’s marketing material, Windows and linux have had both pre-emptive multitasking, and multi threading capabilities standard for many moons.
Edit: The subject should read ” 0S 2″ rather than “OS us”. Guess you can’t edit the subject, never tried before.
Edited 2010-01-10 05:24 UTC
OS/2 had it first (and not only this feature). Why should the marketing refrain from mentioning the merits?
One of the goals of marketing is to differentiate the product from others. If everybody else has preemptive multitasking, it’s not a good selling point, regardless of whether or not OS/2 had it first. That would be like buying a new 2011-model car because its marketed as having electronic fuel injection. What I want to know as a potential customer is what does eComStation do better than the competition that justifies its price?
Edited 2010-01-10 23:44 UTC
Because, it doesn’t say it was the first to have those features, it says its the only one that has it. Which was true, back in the distant past, but no longer true. Its like advertising pepsi, by saying its “cocaine free, unlike coca cola” .
Can someone tell me how advanced and powerful eCS 2.0 will be? Foe example, is it as powerful as Windows 2000, XP or Vista and everything the mentioned OSes can do, eCS will also be able to do as long as someone writes the software?
I really do want to know.
Edited 2010-01-10 05:33 UTC
ECS is basically OS/2 so go figure… it is more or less along the lines of Win2k and OS/2 always has been.
In other words OS/2 with updated drivers and support for latest hardware. I wonder if eCS has access to the source. I tried eCS on VPC and I liked it. Looking forward to the new demo CD.
Edited 2010-01-10 07:44 UTC
That’s not all. The (from my POV) most important feature of OS/2 are its unsurpassed integrative possibilities. As Thom mentions in another comment OS/2 runs DOS better than DOS and Win 3.1 better than Win 3.1. (This meant for me I could run dozens of DOS boxes concurrently on one machine while developing programs on my job.) It is very friendly to linux software, too. We now use samba und CUPS, we’ve adapted qt4. Our assembler-coded pmview is the fastest picture viewer/editor on earth. We’ve got the big standards like AMP, the fx/tb suite and OpenOffice.
And we enjoy something that according to the gurus of the rest of the world must not be enjoyed ever: A malware free OS. 18 years of the delicious forbidden fruit without regret.
Hi, frajo, I have always favored the eCS look and feel and I like the OS in general. It reminds me so much on classic Window 9x/2000 and I like this. I also really like the way your taskbar looks. However I don’t want to raise my hopes for nothing.
Can you honestly answer the following question? Does Serenety Systems have access to the kernel source code or are the current improvements that we see patches on top of an old kernel?
Also something else irrelevant, I am not very aware of how OS/2 works so I want to know: Is OS/2 a GUI on top of DOS or is there no DOS and you just provide access to a command line? Or is it a kind of a mixture of the two? It uses CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXECT.BAT so that makes me think that OS/2 is a GUI on top of DOS but correct me please if I am wrong. I know it’s kind of like NT.
Edited 2010-01-11 00:36 UTC
Its not on top of Dos, rather the other way around. It an os that can run dos compatible programs, even better than NT could. Its a fully fledged, decent Operating system, not at all like the 9x branch of windows that was really sorta kinda based on dos. But yes, similar to NT ( NT was not based on dos, its New Technology.. NT) in that NT is also not a gui on top of dos, but can run some dos programs.
Basically, you’r confused, but I’m not sure I did a very good job of un confusing you. good luck.
Basically, you’r confused, but I’m not sure I did a very good job of un confusing you. good luck.
hehe thanks for that Bill. You actually did a very job at clearing things up. Yes, I was already aware of how NT works. Basically NT completely eliminated the need for DOS and it just emulates it now within the GUI.
Based on your explanation, OS/2 is the same. The confusing thing though is the need for AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS as these are purely needed for DOS, which makes me think before OS/2 starts, DOS starts too.
Edited 2010-01-11 06:39 UTC
Yeah,they are there simply for dos compatibility. I think I remember seeing those in early versions of NT too, but its been a while.
For a little more clarity, remember that Microsoft used to work for IBM and they co-developed OS/2. IBM did much of the heavy lifting, IMHO. When the companies parted ways Microsoft renamed their copy of OS/2 ‘Windows NT’. Window 7 is in fact Windows NT version 6.1 according to the kernel used. So eCS and Windows 7 have a common ancestry.
I’m pretty sure they don’t. Only the win 16 api was part of the licensing. Any OS/2 code in NT would mean IBM would have full access to NT and the win 32 api. I remember reading that the author they hired away from dec Dave Cultler said that one of his preconditions for working with MS, was never having to work with IBM.
The OS/2 CONFIG.SYS shares the name with the file used by DOS (mainly for historical reasons), but the contents are quite different.
AUTOEXEC.BAT is only used in OS/2 Virtual DOS Machines, which are independent processes running under the OS/2 kernel which emulator a DOS kernel and the core DOS device drivers (mouse, serial, and so on). It can be named anything, really, and each VDM can have its own.
Not that much different from running DOSEMU under Linux except for the fact that DOSEMU isn’t as well integrated with the system in most Linux distros, and OS/2 VDMs are somewhat more flexible still.
The OS/2 Windows subsystem (WinOS2) also runs in a VDM. It isn’t a Windows API translator … it’s a licensed and partially rewritten copy of Windows 3.11 with various fixes applied that runs as a DPMI client inside a VDM.
OS/2 is a text-mode OS with a preemptively multitasking kernel much like Linux is, and Windows NT is, although OS/2 (and eCS) can be booted without a GUI at all, while I’m not sure how possible that is even with newer Windows variants.
While its commands do share a history with DOS (it was initially developed by MS and IBM back in the days when DOS was the common OS for x86 PCs), it has a number of commands which DOS does not. And you can always use an alternative shell like bash if you want. 🙂
it is so expensive.
Your comment made me investigate how much it does cost.
Here in the UK, it is £215 Ouch. More expensive than Windows 7!
I know it has a limited market but this sort of pricing in this day & age is simply downright silly.
Why would I buy this? What (Apart from OS 2 compatibility) is its USP?
Actually there are still institutions which rely on OS/2 software mainly banks and for those the price is ok. I assume ECS core market is the legacy IBM has left over.
And yes they have access to the sources, since they bought them from IBM.
No they don’t. SSI does not have access to source code – at least not to kernel code. Strange?
And companies behind ecomstation (ssi, mensys) never bought os/2 from IBM. It has never been for sale obviously.
Price indeed is ridicoulously high. Strange? No, the lion share of ecs price are IBM royalties.
As long as os/2 won’t be recreated as open source the prices will be restrictive – and we shouldn’t blame SSI or Mensys for that… they do their best, but os/2 code and technologies are still owned by IBM, MS and others.
I’d say one of the major advantages is that eCS can run DOS and Windows 3.x applications better than DOS and Windows 3.x themselves can. Since there are still quite a few applications still in use on those platforms, I’d say that’s a good reason to use eCS.
Yeah, but in 2010, why would you still need to run Windows 3.1 or DOS? Retro-Gaming?
It was cool back then, but if you still rely on a software that require Win 3.1 or DOS, you should question yourself and please, move forward to something new.
Because when you get outside of IT, and you have a piece of DOS software driving a $250K+ CNC machine or other similar real-time device, and it costs $2000 to drop in eCS and a new PC with support to run the user interface, or $25K+ to rewrite and test the SW under Windows or Linux, then guess which one’s going to win out?
FreeDOS maybe? it’s free and open.
To me it’s all about the knowledge – you just have to know about alternatives, or you will gonna pay some ridiculous amount of money, which is unneeded in most cases.
I suppose FreeDOS is a better option in this case. At least, when your DOS software requires direct hardware access, it’s not advisable to run it within a multitasking enviorement.
The Windows enviorement within OS/2 requires, starting from OS/2 Warp 3.0 a copy of Microsoft Windows 3.x.
OS/2 will integrate this windows copy into itself.
(OS/2 2.x had windows support out of the box)
As OS/2 Warp 3+ (and so, eCS since it’s based upon OS/2 4.51) requires a copy of windows 3.x, it would be more logical to run that on top of a (MS)-DOS.
That’s wrong. My copy of eCS 2.0 has Windows 3.x built-in. You don’t need a separate copy.
In the early nineties I used to run DOS games on Warp 3. There was no problem having several different DOS games playing their sounds concurrently with one sound card only. I think this is not any more possible on modern systems.
No. You don’t need a windows licence for any OS/2 or eCS version.
games, yeah, but wasn’t software mentioned to control specific hardware?
Andre,
Yes. If I’m putting something in to run controls programs, I want to make sure that there is a company providing support to me when running their OS on newer hardware.
This is something many people who use Open Source and freeware don’t understand. The people outside of IT who make the purchasing decisions usually will not approve the use of obsolete, Open Source, or freeware software to support something really critical (i.e. used in medical procedures) unless there’s an ironclad support contract in place. This is why companies like Serenity Systems exist, to support those applications that would cost too much to upgrade. Not all companies are like some of those in the IT world
.
In my real job, I do have a lot of open source software in production, including boxes that run CentOS. The only reason we run CentOS is because we have a support contract with a very large multi-national company that puts an engineer in our data center within 4 hours to fix any issues with CentOS, or more importantly, the application on top of it.
I do use FreeDOS at work, specifically for flashing the firmware on Intel NIC cards so I can turn on Adapter Fault Tolerance. However, as good as it is on an HP Proliant DL580 G5, it still gives me some very interesting messages about the PCI buses, so much so that I would never use it in a commercial embedded system.
OS/2 is used in a lot of embedded systems. So is DOS. Serenity Systems provides a fully supported path to running older applications on newer hardware because they provide what companies are looking for in terms of hardware and application compatibility.
I don’t get that from FreeDOS. I can throw a rock and hit consultants/support organizations for many limited-use/older/obsolete OSes out there, including VMS, AmigaOS, and the BSDs, but not for that.
This company is positioned very well.
Then I might point to PTS-DOS, and there might be other commercial DOS versions out there. The point is, for those systems, DOS is more-or-less a bootloader for those programs, then those programs take over control, it bypasses the OS and access the hardware directly. This behaviour is imposible on OS/2, WinNT and simular enviorements.
My point, what i am saying is NOT about commercial/non-commercial, but about technical limitations.
Andre,
PTS-DOS is unclear on its support.
You’ve not written ASM code under DOS, and that statement shows it. Unless you’re writing code that doesn’t hit INT21, you’re using the OS, and then I care.
DOS is not the bootloader people think it is. Command.COM provides a significant amount of functionality to developers via INT21, including File, Serial, Keyboard, and Screen I/O. Unless I want to use the BIOS equivalents, then I have to use the DOS services via Int21. Hitting the hardware is not bad under ASM, but taking the file, serial, screen, and keyboard I/O and throwing it under an OS that does not have support, and has a questionable release schedule is not good when it’s legacy hardware that costs a lot of money.
If I want something supported for that, I’m going to use eCS.
Well, to be fair, DOS can “boot” quite a few OSes. 🙂
It’s not the shell (COMMAND.COM) that does this but the kernel (typically io.sys and msdos.sys). There are a lot of DOSes out there (ROM-DOS, PTS-DOS, FreeDOS, DR-DOS, EDR-DOS, PC-DOS, MS-DOS), and they all have different features and flaws. And technically, they all use the BIOS quite heavily.
For working with modern OSes, you typically use DPMI, which BTW is much better supported in OS/2 (0.9.5) and eCS than others (0.9).
Excuse me for getting that part messed up. It’s been quite a while since I touched PC ASM.
Everything does hit the BIOS, eventually. However, I want to make sure that the person who coded against int21 a certain way years ago is still able to with no issues, and that the calls they make don’t have other unforeseen effects on the stack or registers. DPMI is just a moderator that helps that
.
However, you illustrate another point exactly. I want something that works the way I want when I need it, and if it breaks, I want someone knowledgeable to reproduce the problem and fix it.
OS/2 Warp 3 was available in four flavors back in the day:
OS/2 Warp 3 – red spined box – required Windows 3.1 if you wanted to run Windows. It would integrate with an existing installation, or you could install Windows later on, even on an HPFS partition.
OS/2 Warp 3 “Fullpack” – blue spined box – came with its own copy of Windows 3.x called WinOS2.
OS/2 Warp 3 Connect – red and blue versions as above plus peer to peer networking, TCP/IP, etc.
The first two just had SLIP and PPP dial-up networking, which wasn’t a big deal because very few home users had access to anything requiring ethernet (or other) drivers and hardware.
OS/2 Warp 4 removed all of those variations, and was only available as a fullpack client with full networking support.
In other words, you might’ve been correct depending on which version of Warp 3 you were talking about. 🙂
I bought OS/2 Warp 3.0 years ago, at a used-stuff-marked. Indeed, it was a red spine box.
Oh hell no. I don’t mean to be too dismissive, but on to work with CNC machinery? That’s not smart. If the whole thing kills itself (which will cost $200,000 to fix), do you really want management to find out that you went with a free solution instead of something guaranteed to work just to save $200?
I’m all about free and open code, as long as the potential damages from non compatibility are less than $200 K. Anything new => Open source. Anything legacy => USE LEGACY SYSTEMS FOR COMPATIBILITY.
<sarcasm>
Yeah, but in 2010, why would you still need to run WinXP or Vista? Retro-Gaming?
It was cool back then, but if you still rely on a software that require WinXP or Vista, you should question yourself and please, move forward to something new.
</sarcasm>
Edited 2010-01-11 23:21 UTC
I don’t know what the cost is for a new time buyer but over all the cost is much less than MS Windows. I have kept current with OS/2 for years and have probably spent one fifth the amount that a Windows user would have spent over the same time. It cost me $49 to get 2.0 when it is available – full package not an upgrade. Windows 7 Professional is around $400 last I looked. Of course, you could get an OEM version, but then you are locked into a specific hardware configuration.
That almost makes me want to need an excuse for OS/2
. I remember OS/2 Warp, and it was a great little OS back in the day. I didn’t know the ongoing release/support situation, until today.
If they are not exaggerating features and compatibility too much, that is all kinds of awesome.
Edited 2010-01-11 00:55 UTC
If you need a “Better DOS than DOS” or/and “A better Windows 3.1 than Win 3.1” then YES, OS/2 could be for you.
The point is, in 2010, for *normal users*, other than retro-gaming (DOS), OS/2 has nothing good to offer. We don’t need Win 3.1 anymore. What we do need is better hardware support (current hardware), and if you game just a little, you will need DirectX.
The GUI of OS/2 feels old, like Windows NT old. With Windows 7 and OS X and new KDE 4, OS/2 PM is tired and need a good refresh.
Don’t get me wrong, I can understand a business needing OS/2 to support legacy code that could cost a bundle to re-write. But for anybody else, it’s time to move on… IBM did a less than wonderful job price wise and marketing wise back in the day, and they let Microsoft win.
Edited 2010-01-11 02:20 UTC
The cool bits are managing compatibility, but still making it a clean system to develop on–that unsexy stuff that doesn’t catch the eye.
As a fan of Openbox, I’ll apathetically shrug regarding “modern” GUIs. Everyone is only just now catching up to the millennium (IE, BeOS), with Apple doing the best (having NeXT to work from), and Haiku being close behind. Well-thought-out integration > bolted-on features, every day of the week, twice on Sunday, and–being a Southerner–twice on Wednesday, too.
As a developer, I think I would like working with an updated OS/2 system. There are many types of legacy systems, running various different ways, that would probably be quite a drag, but I don’t think OS/2 would be one of them. Especially not when it’s been updated to work with newer hardware and software.
Edited 2010-01-11 03:17 UTC
For everybody there are things you want to change once a year.
And for everybody there are things that you don’t want to change once you’ve found them to be trustworthy.
It’s everybody’s personal choice into which category his/her OS belongs.
You obviously never worked out in the real world. DOS programs are ridiculously widespread still, at least here in The Netherlands. The tellers at my previous job (I quit exactly one year ago today) were DOS programs, for instance. We ran them on Windows 98, but I would’ve preferred running them on eCS.
DOS is also still big in the embedded world due to its simplicity. I’m no developer, but eCS allows you to run endless DOS instances side-by-side, which should come in handy when developing stuff.
If only they still ran on modern Windows. XP was the last to be fairly useful.
You can still do that with virtualization, it’s just fairly hard to share files and (in some rare cases) potentially slow and buggy.
Its a great operating system, its fast and very stable…
But the userinterface is just ugly as hell. They should hire some interface designers. I dont mean that they must create some bloated themed ui, but just something that is clean and can compete with todays standards.
I don’t understand. How can a UI be ugly if you can design every pixel yourself? Isn’t it a matter of taste only?
Have a look at my desktop layout at http://www.os2world.com/gallery/v/os2desktop/ecs2x/eCS20rc7_090829….
And I’m no graphics guru.
i’m sorry to day but that just doesnt stand up to today standards. And i dont think users want to change everything till they are satisfied with the gui. They should create a more modern default look than it would really be a great system for everyone.
Its good to see a new release. I dipped out of using it as my regular OS when it fell behind in flash and java support. Once the web experience became limited in that way, I switched to linux. Does the new version have modern flash & java support?
eCS 2 will ship with Flash 10, but still no modern Java unfortunately. The newest java available on eCS (with a little bit of hacking) is Java 5.