Submitted by OpenOffice.org 2.0 is close to be released for OS/2 and eComStation. Release Candidate 1 is available for immediate download in English, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Russian and Dutch to all customers of an active Support Agreement for OpenOffice.org for eComStation and IBM OS/2, via their download-area at the Mensys Online Shop.
OpenOffice 2.0 really thrives on a JFS partition; if you have one, install it there. On HPFS it is slooooooooooooooow. eCom 2.0 will be bootable JFS so you may want to wait until then.
Instead of getting VISTA buy a computer preloaded with eComStation and OpenOffice. Good software on good hardware. Instead of a cheaply made DELL. Get a machine that will last. eComStation is more stable than any windows yet easier than Linux.
http://www.curtissystemssoftware.com/preloads.htm
One of the only vendors that sells desktop computers with ECC memory too.
Why buy DELL junk when there are good suppliers you can buy from.
Dell Laptops Have Shocking New Problem
http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/06/dells-17-inchers-packing-a-jolt/
http://www.notebookforums.com/thread188600.html
Dell laptop explodes
http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/20/dell-battery-explodes-at-yahoo-h…
“Exploding” Dell Laptop Destroys Truck, Imperils Outsdoorsmen
Vintage Truck Burns to Ground, Strands Fishermen in Desert Canyon
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/08/dell_fire.html
Why bother to put the time, money, and manpower into a build for an OS with a minimal user-base?
They actually have a pretty good installed user base. They have picked up a lot of OS2 customers that IBM no longer supports.
For a big company it’s no money, but for a small company with a small staff I am sure they are making a few hundred thousand dollars a year.
I would like to have that coming in. More money then me and my staff make.
I actually bet they bring in more money then companies like Ununtu, Linspire and others who are putting in a LOT more money, time and manpower.
If it wasn’t worth their while, I suspect they wouldn’t be doing it.
As it is, though, why not? I think it’s nice to see at least one solid alternative OS which is not derived from UNIX continue to live.
Why bother to put the time, money, and manpower into a build for an OS with a minimal user-base?
May I ask you a very sincere question…
What are you doing here? No, seriously, what are you doing here?
Unless you’re a totally pompous ass Thom, it’s a legitimate question Thom. For a company to put resources into a product that has little to no chance of making a profit is BAD BUSINESS Thom (ask Yellow Tab).
Hobby OSs’ are fine, no argument, but they aren’t a smart business move, Thom.
Because there are still companies out there using OS/2. Isn’t this obvious to you? O_o
There are a lot companies using OS/2 in the embedded field.
Unless you’re a totally pompous ass Thom, it’s a legitimate question Thom. For a company to put resources into a product that has little to no chance of making a profit is BAD BUSINESS Thom (ask Yellow Tab).
Hobby OSs’ are fine, no argument, but they aren’t a smart business move, Thom.
First of all, what concern is it of yours if these businesses make any money or not? (Serenity Systems obviously does make money by the way.)
Secondly, have you ever used eComStation? It actually is a pretty decent OS. Not something I could use everyday, but that’s more because I’m a *NIX-head. Serenity Systems have done a lot of great things for the OS/2 community, and yes there are a lot of businesses still running mission critical code on OS/2 or eComStation today. It is difficult and probably not cost effective to port legacy applications off of this platform because the OS/2 APIs are very different from the rest of the OSes out there today. Additionally, in the business world, a lot of people (rightly so) subscribe to the mantra “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. By porting code that has worked flawlessly for a decade or more, you have a HUGE potential for introducing subtle bugs. This is not acceptable for many applications. Additionally, a lot of in-house software is poorly documented and difficult to work with and understand, especially if the person who originally wrote that code has gone on to greener pastures. In these cases, legacy binary compatibility is a must.
Thirdly, if you see something posted on this site as useless, do the rest of us a favor and ignore it. Don’t tell us it’s useless, just say to yourself, wow, that’s useless, and move on to a story that you can contribute positive discussion to.
If you want to read stories with this formula:
if(topic==”Linux”||topic==”Windows”||topic==”Mac”) then post()
…then I suggest you take a look at Slashdot.org
Most of the rest of us like reading about obscure OSes.
Jon, not only they are making profit, but they are making it even BEFORE releasing the final port: this port was realized because of a lot of people was interested. They issued a “support agreement”, where people would buy the final product (and have right to all the betas and to the previous 1.1.5 release) for a reduced price, but paid BEFORE the start of the actual development.
…and BTW, calling OS/2 a “hobby OS” is frankly ridiculous.
The fact that you’re calling an OS from IBM a “hobby OS” is rather interesting. Are you that out of touch with OS/2’s rather lengthy history in business?
Why bother to put time into complaining about something you know nothing about? What do you get out of it? Does it make you feel better? Do you feel more like a man?
Do you often take time to complain about every other operating system that isn’t microsoft based? If you do then you already understand your own question and should apply it to what you do.
I defend your right to whine and complain about everything, but I will tell you most people have given that up by the time they reach 8 years old. How old are you?
Nathan
To Kim Cheung? The other eComStation guy.
Good question. He hasn’t been active on the eCS mailing lists for quite a while (since 2001?).
JonInAtlanta,
There are many OSes out there with minimal userbases that get updates all the time. In the case of Serenity Systems, they have paying customers who want this functionality. The continued development of their OS allows them to fund this development.
There are many people out there who run Operating Systems with what would be considered a minimal user-base, and there are too many of those operating systems to mention in one single posting.
There are also unique reasons for each person wanting to do what they want. It’s called Free Will or the pursuit of knowledge. These people do what they want because they want to do it, and may learn something from the process.
While you or I may not agree with the choices that some people make for a choice of operating environment to use, or what software to port to it, its not up to us to criticize them, or their reasons, for doing what they do.
Otherwise, this is an accomplishment that’s quite interesting, as this came out long before a native OpenOffice for OS X
.
Why bother to put the time, money, and manpower into a build for an OS with a minimal user-base?
Why [insert whatever you want] for a OS like [insert small-market OS]
Answer: It’s OSAlert.com dude! People do stuff like this becauses they like it, love it, want to do it, feel compelled, or whatever. Some make money, some don’t. If that rattles you, then just head on over to MSN and have fun! I hear they have Pics of Paris Hilton!
Too bad it’s so expensive… Warp was awesome on my Pentium 100MHz back 10 years ago… No way I’ll pay $189 for an academic version now though.
It’s more cost-effective if you can find an old copy of Warp 4 somewhere. US$79 isn’t too bad.
They actually charge for their builds of a a free product and ruthlessly anybody who might even THINK of providing a free build. Various people tried this with builds GIMP for Windows, but it never really had an effect as the official GIMP webpage makes no mention of this travesty and provides it’s own builds for free as is good and natural.
Not so evil. Innotek wrote a library that allows OS/2 (eCS, whatever) to simulate many of the library calls of another OS. They integrated OpenOffice with this library (and probably made significant alterations to the library). This is what they’re charing for. I’m happy to pay it.
How do they go after others that provide a free build? Are you mixing them up with GoldenCode?
Innotek is not evil: they have all the right to make you pay for the runtime library that allows OS/2-eCS to run Win32 binaries. It’s something like CrossOver on Linux.
And they are NOT preventing anybody from providing a free build… there were in fact a few dudes running OpenOffice on the free Odin runtime (Odin=wine, Innotek=CrossOver), but it was not working as well.
Anyway, the build we’re talking about here is a NATIVE build, and AFAIK it’s not done by Innotek.
Open Office arose from Sun’s release of code–I’m showing I don’t know the legally and technically correct expression–for an office productivity suite, Sun Office, which Sun still develops and distributes. Which came from? Inhouse work in porting Star Office from and by a German company, Star, which Sun had purchased several years earlier. And for what OS had Star created its most extensive –(or only?–version of Star Office, (including a browser)? The predecessor of ecomstation, IBM’s OS/2.
What’s the point ?, someone asked. (And — by implication — not just in developing for the OS, but in anyone bothering to run it.) Oh, I dunno, maybe the **near total immunity** from tons of malware and ongoing, ubiquitous exploit holes out there in the Redmond products ?! It’s not simply a matter of stability, because W2K and XP finally reached a point of being much better than what MS had done before. It will likely take Vista a good couple years to get to that point.
But big market share always makes you a target worth going after, so it becomes a big plus to be little known and essentially invisible. This is particularly the case in regard to mainstream business apps, such as are covered by Open Office, where you only need to be able to work compatibly with the prevalent file formats. For other apps, such as in some multi-media areas, I’m afraid you’ll just have to keep strapping that gigantic neon bullseye onto your back ! Or head on over to the ‘Nix.
Edited 2007-02-11 21:44