Sebastien LELONG wrote:
> PS: I still cannot believe some people here uses OS/2. Is it still available
> ?
> Why using it ? Is it downloadable ? Free ?
I'm probably the only one here, so who else could answer these
questions? It's somewhat off-topic, but since you asked:
IBM OS/2 is not available anymore. It was withdrawn in 1996 but
supported and maintained until 2006. Another company (Serenity Systems
International) obtained the rights to re-distribute it under another
name: eComStation or eCS for short (I believe since about 2000). Support
for newer hardware (larger disks, USB and more) has been added to eCS,
and many popular applications (Firefox, Thunderbird, etc) have a native
eCS version the same day or one day after the Linux or Windows version.
Same for the Jal compiler and GPutils, which I build and distribute
myself. And I have a developed and distribute a couple of OS/2 programs
myself (e.g. XWisp2, of which I also distribute a Linux and Windows
version!)
eCS is not free. I pay a maintenance fee (a few tens of Euros per year),
which I think is worth to keep it up to date. The eCS user community is
tiny compared to Linux, but the spirit is similar: there are many
contributors of useful drivers and applications, mostly free of charge
and frequently open source.
With the release of OS/2 Warp (2.0) in the early nineties it was 10
years ahead of Windows, and I found it unbelievable that so many people
were so stupid to believe that W95 was better than OS/2 Warp.
Reasons for me to use it today is that I have used OS/2 since the first
release (1988), I'm very familiar with it, have developed several
applications and it still suites my needs.
I have installed several Linux distributions on a multi-boot disk and
use these from time to time. I have also installed WinXP, but use it
seldomly. Both are rather primitive and clumsy, especially as far as the
workplace shell (GUI) is concerned.
Using a niche market product has advantages (like no viruses!) but of
course also disadvantages, but I managed to overcome the latter so far.
By using Linux from time to time I prepare myself for a switch-over in
case eCS falls over or doesn't suite my needs anymore.
Regards, Rob.
--
Rob Hamerling, Vianen, NL (http://www.robh.nl/)
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