Re: The time, my friends, has come for OS/3

Post #22,332 by jake123 12/23/01 2:27:06 PM Reply	Re: The time, my friends, has come for OS/3 What is OS/3 you ask? It is what I call the next evolution in OS/2 to the open source movement. IBM should take the part of OS/2 that it didn't licence and realase the source code to the open source community along with the API calls that OS/2 uses. The open source community then can re-write the parts that are missing. The Linux and BSD code can then be used to plug in the missing parts, and also be used to run Unix code within OS/3 as well. Also WINE can be merged with ODIN, or both can be used at the same time. Uhh... Norm. First off, what missing parts? Second, you can run unix code already. You get your hands on the emx runtime environment and you can use hundreds of nix programs, up to and including xfree86. For the latest and greatest, you can go look at [link\|http://www.unixos2.org\|the Unix-OS/2 project]. Wine and Odin are already integrated; there's quite a bit of wine code in the Odin APIs. However, Odin uses a different approach than Wine; instead of emulating the Win32 environment, instead it converts the binaries to OS/2 executables "on the fly" when you run the program. Imagine an OS than can run natively OS/2, Windows 3.X, Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP, DOS, POSIX Unix, BSD, and Linux software natively. This is already the case. However, not all software works. Enough software works for it to be useful, though. If you get VPC for eCS, you'll have something that will work for all platforms. If they update the OS/2 kernel to a Cache Kernel they can provide an environment to run multiple platforms on the OS. IBM could control the OS/3 source, and make its money by selling support for OS/3, and selling training and software for it. Well, I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the OS/2 kernel. Of course, I do realise something: you're looking at Warp Connect, right? Well, don't forget that Warp Connect was released in late 1994/early 1995. You should look at what's current today to get a real feel for what's going down. Warp (contrary to most reports) has not* stagnated since 1996. On to more concrete issues... you want to get your hands on Visual Age C++ for OS/2 version 3. Pick up a copy on eBay. You can download the fixpacks for it from IBM; they're still available on their site. You want fixpack 8. You'll also want to get gcc for OS/2. You can find it in the /pub/os2/dev tree at Hobbes, or you can find it at unixos2.org. If you want the latest port for gcc 3.x, get it from unixos2.org. Spend some time browsing around at hobbes... there's a lot of great software in the nooks and crannies. You're used to Visual Basic, right? I'd strongly urge you to learn REXX; it's the scripting language that ships with OS/2. Fortunately for you, there's a version of Object REXX that you can download for free for Warp Connect. It's a much better implementation of an OO environment than VB ever will be. In fact, overall I find REXX to be a much nicer language to program in than VB. Haunt eBay and watch for either VX-REXX or VisProREXX; these are both visual environments for designing gui programs using rexx. I have VisPro... it rocks. Hmmm... if you got the BonusPak with WarpConnect, install IBM Works, and go search on IBM for the [link\|ftp://ftp.pc.ibm.com/pub/pccbbs/os2_ews/\|EWS software repository]. Get a package on there called [link\|ftp://ftp.pc.ibm.com/pub/pccbbs/os2_ews/excal.zip\|ExCal], to give you an idea of how powerful wps programming can be. And, last but not least, make sure you give [link\|http://www.xworkplace.org\|XWorkPlace] a try. It will rock your world:) especially after you realise it was programmed by a lawyer in his spare time. Ulrich is a true geek:) Oh yeah... xworkplace is GNU, so you can get the source code for it from his website via CVS. There's a knife and fork, my friend... have at the meal that awaits you! -- ---------------------------------------------------------- * Jack Troughton jake at jakesplace.dhs.org * * [link\|http://jakesplace.dhs.org\|[link\|http://jakesplace.dhs.org\|http://jakesplace.dhs.org]] [link\|ftp://jakesplace.dhs.org\|[link\|ftp://jakesplace.dhs.org\|ftp://jakesplace.dhs.org]] * * Montr\ufffdal PQ Canada [link\|news://jakesplace.dhs.org\|news://jakesplace.dhs.org] * ----------------------------------------------------------
Post #22,335 by nking 12/23/01 3:45:23 PM Reply	I had no idea that such stuff existed. It is a meal indeed. The missing parts of OS/2, would be the MS licensed code, and other code that IBM licensed that could not be released. Maybe my dream of OS/3 is not realistic? Keep OS/2 the way it is then? I'll work with GCC and see how it does before I buy a copy of Visual Age C++. This is because my budget is limited at the time due to being uninstalled. But at least I am looking into new areas of computers and trying out OS/2 as an alternative. "Before Christmas it is 'Ho ho ho', after Christmas it is 'Owe owe owe'" - Santa Norm
Post #23,758 by imric 1/10/02 11:24:40 AM Reply	I dunno... ..it's not a bad dream. I've always wanted the WPS implemented on Linux. I don't understand why IBM doesn't do this - I think releasing that source (even missing licensed portions) would garner tremendous goodwill from the OSS community AND confound it's competitors. Since that seems unlikely, though, I'd like to see the source code for wpsfwin (WPS for Windows - I try it under Wine every once in a while...) released (this was employee-created software, no?) and see how hard it would be to port to Linux/X-Windows... Imric's Tips for Living Paranoia Is a Survival Trait Pessimists are never disappointed - but sometimes, if they are very lucky, they can be pleasantly surprised... Even though everyone is out to get you, it doesn't matter unless you let them win.
Post #23,763 by Andrew Grygus 1/10/02 11:54:20 AM Reply	From what I read some time ago . . . . Linux doesn't have the object oriented underpinnings to fully support the WPS, so it can be only imperfectly implemented. Of course, most would be better than none. IBM did ask outright at one convention whether people would like to see the WPS on Linux and got very positive response, but I think they are trying not to compete with the distributions. Today, I expect, so many at IBM are so accustomed to Windows that KDE looks good enough to them. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #23,769 by bepatient 1/10/02 12:45:21 PM Reply	Don't depress me like that. Today, I expect, so many at IBM are so accustomed to Windows that KDE looks good enough to them. I know its probably true...but it's still damned depressing. You were born...and so you're free...so Happy Birthday! _{Laurie Anderson} [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient]
Post #23,778 by Another Scott 1/10/02 1:58:11 PM Reply	I don't think it's the OOP stuff myself, but licensing. Hi Andrew and All, . . Linux doesn't have the object oriented underpinnings to fully support the WPS, so it can be only imperfectly implemented. I don't think that's the issue myself. The OOP stuff of the WPS is in PMWP.DLL, I think. It's only 935421 bytes on my Warp 3 Connect system. Its entry point are listed [link\|http://home.clara.net/orac/os2/pmwp.htm\|here]. IBM documented an awful lot of the WPS programming issues. See, e.g., this review of [link\|http://www.edm2.com/0402/codesmith.html\|OS/2 Warp Workplace Shell API] by Carsten Whimster in EDM/2. Someone who understood this well enough, maybe like Kurt Westerfeld (author of Object Desktop for OS/2), could port a PMWP.DLL-like interface to Linux. I suspect that there are some licensing issues with the code, or IBM doesn't have enough people who understand the WPS code to make it releasable, or IBM thinks the code is more valuable kept internally, or IBM simply isn't interested releasing it is the reason the WPS code hasn't been released. Not some limitation in Linux. But I have no inside information - the above is just my take. [link\|http://www.pandemonium.de/Linux/Warp/\|Here's] a page on getting the OS/2 WPS look on Linux. It doesn't address all of the wonderful OO-features of the shell though. Cheers, Scott.
Post #23,863 by altmann 1/11/02 3:48:30 AM Reply	Other possible problems WPS needs support for attributes in the underlying file system. Shell objects' attributes can be stored in a file as they are in WPS, but the files and such that poke thru the shell interface need somewhere to store their attributes. I think OS/2's solution for filesystems like FAT is a attributes file in each directory that needs one (Actually it appears to be more [link\|http://www.tavi.co.uk/os2pages/eadata.html\|complicated] than that). I believe MacOS X does something similar to file shares. A nx port would need to use a EA capable filesystem or a scheme like those listed above. Something like the later would also be needed for foriegn file systems (ie: NFS mounts). However, this brings up the next problem. Where do you put attributes for a folder to which you don't have write permissions? Should every user have to share all of the attributes of a file? Just some of them? None of them? One possible solution to this (and the other problem too I suppose) is to keep these attributes in the same file (or another similar cache file) as the shell objects. After playing with WPS recently, I was suprised to see how much of a self contained 'shell' over the exisitng drive letter/directory structure it really is. If one didn't care about the intermixing of (non-shadow) file system objects and shell objects, one could envision a the desktop folders and objects live in their own virtual world (ie: inside a DB file) and filesystem files are only viewed and accessed (say to create a shadow in the desktop) from file system browsers. Make the user understand there is a sepration of the two structures. But then that starts to sound like the Win3.X interface with the Program Manager let out of its window onto the desktop. -- Chris Altmann

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