
Thread beginning with comment 5005
RE: "Re: So ... it's now offical..." @rcsteiner
by on Sat 16th Jul 2005 03:29 UTC

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Thanks for the long and thoughtful response.

Up front: I'm an old OS/2 advocate and have fond memories of the same way that I did about my 198? Ford Escort. It doesn't mean that I want one now!

As for me, I'll try and keep my response short and to the point...otherwise we'd be writing novels soon.

I'm talking about Rex. Good guy. He was visiting the company I worked for at the time when he made the comments. 4DOS was adapted to do parsing of config files as a part of a DOS memory manager (386Max & BlueMax).

As for Impractical. I can't run VMWare on my PPro box (not enough RAM), and Xen requires changes to existing OSes I have to disagree;

1. Pentium Pros were released about 10 years ago. They haven't been sold in almost as many years. Most elementary schools won't take them if you gave them away.

2. VM systems are useable now on current hardware.

3. Xen 3.x comming out shortly will not require changes to an OS with the proper hardware.

EMX and posix subsystems. Nope. Haven't heard or EMX. Did know about OS/2's posix support. Doesn't matter though, since if you compile posix compliant software from source, why not do it under some flavor of unix? (BSD, Linux, Solaris, ...)

Not only does OS/2 have a lot more capable desktop software available for it than either Solaris or ... Linux is a far better alternative, but OS/2 is a hell of a lot more stable (in terms of API) than Linux is, it ...

OS/2's desktop was almost perfect...except for that one lockup problem. That bit me on a regular basis. Linux with either KDE (using it now) or Gnome (use it at work) don't.

"The only completely consistent people are the dead." -- Aldous Huxley

Same goes for operating systems, toolkits, and APIs. The APIs layered on top of X are not specific to any one *nix are stable -- though they aren't static. They are messy and complex as a whole -- because people are spending time developing them and improving them.

Now, addressing your comment about size: OS/2 can't be scaled down. Linux (and the BSDs) can and are; Linksys routers, cell phones, and the future Palm OS.

OS/2 can't be scaled up. Linux (and the BSDs) are; from servers, to clusters, grids, and mainframes including most of the top 500 supercomputers.

OS/2 can't be deployed on new hardware or any non-x86 hardware (and no, I don't count the limited release PowerPC version as viable). Does OS/2 support serial ATA devices? I'd be stunned if it did.

Linux (and the BSDs) are; available for just about any CPU in current production plus a few that are no longer being produced. All categories of devices are supported, if not any one specific device.

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rcsteiner Member since:

Thanks for the response. :-)

FWIW, I *do* largely agree that either Linux or *BSD or something fairly similar is probably the future (which is why I've been slowly trying to migrate my desktop in that direction since the RedHat 4.2 days, and why my file servers and firewall are already there).

Most of my comments are made in my own desktop context at home on my existing hardware, and are being made as a long-time OS/2 user who has had over a decade to accumulate lots of very useful software that is no longer available to the public. :-(

A new OS/2 user would probably find things a lot more difficult than I do.

Because of this, I don't advocate OS/2 anymore for general use, although I still think it has some value for reasons that I outlined previously.

I agree that my PPro boxes are very old, but using OS/2 I can still surf the web with Firefox with no delays using a cablemodem connection, I can still burn CDs in the background while doing other stuff, I can still do the types of application work that I need to at home, and I can still play a number of the smaller games I like putzing around with.

That's all I ask of a desktop machine.

In any case, I'd say I got a *lot* of value for my PC dollar (both in terms of hardware and software). :-)

I agree with most of your architectural comparisons between OS/2 and Linux, but those features (while nice) won't run the software I want to run in the way I want it to be run, and the X toolkit API thrashing is really bugging the heck out of me.

Until that stuff is addressed, or unless my existing desktop stops doing what I want, it's going to be hard for me to justify a move. It has to be a net positive, and right now it isn't. Its' getting a LOT closer as time goes on, though...

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