Thanks for this ! Now I want to install it :) Seb
Le Saturday 04 October 2008 11:05:39 Rob Hamerling, vous avez écrit : > 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 It was withdrawn in 1996 but 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. -- Sébastien LELONG http://www.sirloon.net http://sirbot.org --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "jallib" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/jallib?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
