OS/2-BBS reports that “SciTech SNAP Graphics for OS/2 version 2.2.4 has been released (11/6/2003). This is a replacement product for SciTech Display Doctor, which has some new features, like zooming and multihead. There is a changelog, as well as a list of chipsets supporting the various features. There is a user mailing list, a trouble ticket HelpDesk for registered users, and an official newsgroup.” Elsewhere, SciTechSoft also released the 1.2 beta of the OpenWatcom dev suite.
SciTech SNAP Graphics for OS/2 v2.2.4 and OpenWatcom Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
On the one hand in order to enjoy the sight of OS/2
in full color on my SiS730 (siS630 compatible) chipset
computer I’d have to buy the SNAP drivers for it–and
chances are I’d need to run out and buy the eCom Station
if I wanted anything half-way recent–I am NOT in the
mood for multi-floppy updates ;( which I’d have to do
in order to patch the version I have up to date..
Yet on the other hand OS/2 Warp on ‘modern’ hardware!!!!
[wipes away the geek lust induced drol] If only Scitech
would consider releasing something like this for Win3.x
so I could play with Calmira in full color in a native
enviroment on modern hardware…perhaps something like
the above with a special cross platform drivers for the
hardware liscense? Or do they already have something
like that and I missed it? Ahh well, at least they’ve
been working hard on their Linux support too and someday
I’ll be able to run Linux in accelerated 3d on my SiS730
for a reasonable price.
PS: Sorry for the meandering post but after clicking on
the title expecting to see two posts, only to find they’ve
both been modded down was disappointing and I want at
least _one_ post on topic for this OS…
Does anyone here have any experience with the OpenWatcom compiler suite? I realize it hasn’t yet been ported to Linux, but I remember back to the days of DOS, when Watcom was THE C compiler to use if you wanted blazingly fast executables, and wonder if this “open” version is anything like it, and is worth using.
I use OpenWatcom to be have a crossplatform development to write my C programs for OS/2 and Windows.
It has a very nice debugger (though you have to be careful with the linker options to get it working properly (don’t use incremental linking)) and it has a decent profiler which allows you to investigate how the cpu time is spent within your program.
By the way I’m getting very annoyed to get those subtile pushes to use Linux.
I have been using UNIX (Xenix, Coherent, Solaris, SCO, HP-UX, SGI IRIX, Linux (remember the Yggdrasil times, the early SlackWare days ?) for about 20 years now. Some 10-15 years ago everyone told me I was crazy using Unix. Now Linux seems to be the OS to have and run. Perhaps someone can explain me what has changed. Sorry guys but I think that about every remark you make about OS/2 – eComStation can be made also about Linux. Perhaps someone can explain to me also why a better (yep I mean BETTER) Unix-like OS like e.g. the BSD-variants doesn’t get the same credits that Linux gets.
It’s the power of “marketing”, Like a few years ago everybody talked about stocks, the majority couldn’t even explain what a mutual fund is. Same with OSs, everybody talks about Linux, most can’t even list more than two brands of OS’s if you ask them. This includes all the IT folks in my company.
hello, i remeber you as contributor for os2ezine.com – is that correct? small world, smaller eCS & OS/2 world indeed
well about Linux: i think its the “trick” about mixturer between “free”: its interpretated as “free beer” for companies to safe money and interpretated as “free-dom” for a lot of motivated programmers…
Therefore Linux is THE growing “unix-falvour” now – well and actually this is a good thing IMO as it helps to enlarge the unix-sector itself – even if it also gets competitive to the big ones like solaris, irix, aix… but all these unix-flavours have always been very specialised… so maybe linux will substitue these ones in some years…
anyways it seems to create a great chance: a big firm like MS can’t buy the “property” of GNU itself…
-> back to OS/2: yeahh i have VPC/2 here – but afeter MS bought Connectix I can abadom my license for Virtual PC…
-> imagine IBM would have released SOM and the fantastic WPS as OSS -> lot of users would LOVE to have such a desktop under Linux…
-> thats IMO why Linux or better GNU/Linux is so popular…
need snap for skyos.
Can you explain why Linux is worse than other *nices? Sure, IRIX beats it to a pulp, but *BSD? Nah. FreeBSD is a lot harder to use (for me) and there were benchmarks recently that showed it to be worse in scalability than Linux 2.6 (OBSD was so bad it didn’t stack up to 2.4). It looks like this is just your prejudice against Linux-users, who you seem to think are intruding upon your Unix turf.
Linux is good at least because it gave the (free) Unix a huge additional mindshare boost. Without mindshare you can’t do anything.
Also: What remarks about OS/2 in particular can be applied to Linux? Obsolete, ugly, looks like 1995? Certainly not my GNU/*/Linux system.
I use OpenWatcom for OS/2, it is indeed quite good, although the IDE itself feels incredibly outdated, it does do the job at hand, and it’s easy enough to get up and running and setup your compiler switches. The only problem I have is constant lockups using the debugger, and I can’t even get in to wildcat to end the process… reboot is the only option. Through what I hear though, this is alas, typical of any PM debugger and the only debugger that is halfway decent is VAC’s where IBM use some tricks to bypass some of the problems. All in all though, yea, openwatcom is a decent enough compiler.
@eric martin (IP: —.ipt.aol.com)
SciTech gives out the framework NOT the drivers themselves. I thought the same for AROS.
@Greg (IP: —.dsl.milwwi.ameritech.net)
Also: What remarks about OS/2 in particular can be applied to Linux? Obsolete, ugly, looks like 1995? Certainly not my GNU/*/Linux system.
It maybe ugly but the “plumbing” is 10 times better, you can actually install it without a fuss and it doesn’t have the Linux problems of having to install new apps like all the Linux distros have. OS/2 > Linux.
Quote: “On the one hand in order to enjoy the sight of OS/2
in full color on my SiS730 (siS630 compatible) chipset
computer I’d have to buy the SNAP drivers for it–and
chances are I’d need to run out and buy the eCom Station
if I wanted anything half-way recent–I am NOT in the
mood for multi-floppy updates ;( which I’d have to do
in order to patch the version I have up to date..”
So what you are syaing is that you are too lazy to get the free one, and that you only have a floppy drive? You should buy a CD drive. They are quite common nowadays. And yes, OS/2 on modern hardware is very nice. Funny how people think the defaults of what an OS looked like 10 years ago is what it looks like now. Default X sucks. Defualt KDE is just like XP – candy. Default GNOME is – amazingly – trying to implement OS/2 properties. Spend some time customizing, which I’m sure you’ve done to your GNOME desktop (even though we know XFCE is better) and I’m sure it’ll look nice as well. My OS/2 desktop is staying regardless of the it’s dead FUD.
“It maybe ugly but the “plumbing” is 10 times better, you can actually install it without a fuss and it doesn’t have the Linux problems of having to install new apps like all the Linux distros have. OS/2 > Linux.”
Installation? “emerge package” or “apt-get install package” or “yum install package”.
The “plumbing” is not 10 times better. I suggest you try running OS/2 on a mainframe, a PPC, an Alpha, etc. etc. Or walking up to a sysadmin and telling hir to switch to OS/2 (the banking sector being a notable exception–they don’t upgrade through sheer inertia). OS/2 is certainly superior to DOS, but as “plumbing” goes, WinNT beats it any day.
@Greg (IP: —.dsl.milwwi.ameritech.net)
Installation? “emerge package” or “apt-get install package” or “yum install package”.
The “plumbing” is not 10 times better. I suggest you try running OS/2 on a mainframe, a PPC, an Alpha, etc. etc. Or walking up to a sysadmin and telling hir to switch to OS/2 (the banking sector being a notable exception–they don’t upgrade through sheer inertia). OS/2 is certainly superior to DOS, but as “plumbing” goes, WinNT beats it any day.
Someday Windows will multitask properly like OS/2. IIRC OS/2 comes with every purchase of an IBM mainframe. And I like my OS/400 much more than Linux on an AS/400 thank you!
Yesterday, I went to someone’s house to install Red Hat Linux 9. The person wanted the Ximian desktop because the person said that it was better than what was included in RH9. Red Hat 9 installation was done. When the computer booted up, it gave an error (dhcppc2). We logged in anyway. Then proceeded immediatly to install Ximian Desktop. The installation went fine. After all that, we went to try out somethings. Samba didn’t work. So no MP3s from the local server. Next we went to GAIM. It’s an older version (0.64 IIRC) so no MSN support. We went to the GAIM web site. And downloaded the RH9 RPM. It won’t install. Double-clicking on the RPM generates an error. So we went on. Next up was Remote Desktop. The Remote Desktop included is very buggy and won’t properly save the specified settings nor apply them to the session. Lotsa garbled graphics. We didn’t get to updating the NVIDIA, NTFS and FAT32 add-ons drivers. I don’t even wanna know how the Rhythmbox installation went. Also when I was there we had not tried to print, update OO.o nor the other programs. He’s gonna have a lot of searches on Googles and “make installs” to do.
Red Hat has always caused issues, mostly due to the utterly broken packaging system you describe. Fedora would have had better luck. Or SuSE, for that matter. If you’re intent on RPMs, that is.
You could always use Libranet or Debian Sid. Since no non-technical person would use OS/2 today anyway (except through work), I’m sure that’s not a problem.
>Since no non-technical person would use OS/2 today anyway >(except through work), I’m sure that’s not a problem.
Actually, I did some testing, and OS/2 is still GREAT for older hardware as well as new. While Microsoft throws out OS’s to the obsolete bin (aka DOS, WIN95 etc) OS/2 will still run great on 10 year old hardware, and that same version will run great on modern hardware (with patches), now, for value for money… then OS/2 still has some bite left in her. With Serenity Systems porting OpenOffice, and projects like Odin, there is NO REASON what so ever to not try OS/2 STILL if your unhappy with the Windoze market.
Linux may be free, FreeBSD may be free, but OS/2 has that advantage that Win9x has.. basically anyone can soon figure out how to use it.
I say long live OS/2.
Just some idle thoughts from someone who’s spent a fair amount of time using OS/2. FreeBSD, and assorted flavors of Linux:
1. From the user perspective, Linux and the BSD’s are essentially equivalent. One’s a mirror image of Unix, the other has a real claim to be Unix. Apps that run on one run on the other. Outside of userspace, there are many differences, of course.
2. Giving the edge to an OS because you like the X-based display that runs on it is misguided. It isn’t the OS that you’re praising, it’s the display. X is available for OS/2 as well as Linux and the BSD’s.
3. Open source offers a valuable environment for many developers. For most of the people who use that code, the primary attraction of open source code is this: They Don’t Need To Pay For It. Consider, if Linux was still GPL’d but cost $500 per seat, would it still be as popular? If it used a restrictive proprietary licensebut still cost nothing, would it be as popular? (I’ll vote for the second option.)
4. Linux is primarily a social, not a technical, phenomenon. It is, after all, a mirror image of Unix that exists because Torvalds couldn’t afford to buy the real thing. Little innovation has resulted from its creation.
5. For an OS that’s been “dead” for years, modern OS/2 is a very capable OS . It’s interface remains, arguably, the most capable in the business, although most users never do anything more than click on an icon. Criticism of OS/2 users who still run old DOS software should be tempered with the thought that the heyday of DOS saw a flowering of innovative software that no other OS has spawned since. (Desktop word processors, spreadsheets, PIMs, file manangers, point-and-click interfaces, and many other software categories all flowered on DOS. Some of those DOS tools — Agenda and Magellan, to name two — still outclass anything in their category.
6. Benchmark tests that show one OS with an advantage in a particular category, like scalability, mean little or nothing to an ordinary desktop user. Desktop users form their opinions and preferences subjectively, not by readng benchmark results.
Couldn’t have said it better
I know SciTech employees read this board, so I hope someone can point me to the right email address for technical and licensing questions. I tried [email protected] but got an automated response directing me to the FAQs.
Thanks,
Sander
Make that [email protected].
Feel free to contact me directly:)