IBM

Yeah XFree86 would be neat, but I'm not sure it'll beat the T221 on the g2-brick.

I like DOS apps, mostly because I find GUIs somewhat of a distraction, I've used text-based email clients until 2010, and now, work forces me to use outlook which is just awful. I hate it; it's counter-productive and a complete waste of my time and skills.

Back to DOS (and OS/2), I like the minimalistic design, it's often reduced to the minimum, is made to run on "low end" machines (was high end then, perhaps); and, as far as I'm concerned, does the job better than the new crop; which is pretty much the same thing sold with a different widget and support contract. As such I'm exploring DOS apps that I've neglected in the past (dbase III etc.) and I'm loving it.

Now I need to be able to make eComStation a DOS shell server so I can use it (no vnc please) from my irix boxes.

I think you're right about that But see below ...

Mesa was the spreadsheet I was thinking of, has some neat features. And ClearLook is another word processor for OS/2. I stuck with Describe since once you buy something you tend to stick to it (remember when Word cost $400 ?) but ClearLook is more like InDesign than Word, text goes in cells and so on.


What ? no leaping bunny rabbits, croaking frogs or animated-typhoon icons ? For shame

Can you get the Warp 3 icons in eCS ? You might even prefer the Warp 3 look. I find it less gimmicky.


Serif PagePlus ran in winos and was just about the perfect size. Ami Pro 3.1 was good. Cadkey 7 DOS. First Choice. Footprintworks. Lots of the applications that come with Warp 3 are nice little programs. If they had released the winos2 changes that made Win95 run in OS/2 ... if if if.


XFree86 will do this. Oh yeah ... you can run CP/M in a VDM. OS/2 doesn't actually run DOS - those are Virtual DOS Machines. Virtualization on the desktop in 1995 while we waited for Chicago to come out. Waited all year. And when it came, it was nothing but a pretty face. Lipstick, meet pig.

It's amazing how many people like to cuddle up with pigs

You can't run workplace shell programs through XFree but any non-WPS app will run on your OS/2 box viewed from your Irix box via X. Hunt around on Hobbes, you'll find most everything there. I never did it but there are Mootif and Lesstif libraries for OS/2, I imagine you could even build Motif apps that displayed remotely as semi-Irix programs. XFree is not a joy to set up but it does work fine. I ran a dual PPro Intellistation from an Indigo quite a bit. I wonder if there is an NFS for OS/2 ... ?

A whole bunch of writeups for various programs here :

http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n10/pr22.htm

and I almost forgot ... Open Office started life an OS/2 program You can probaly still get Star Writer somewhere ....

It's pretty neat. You should have a lot of fun.

Back when I first heard about OS/2 Harvard Graphics was the app that everyone seemed to be oohing and aahing over.

What was the selling argument for OS/2 other than real dos compatibility?
I understand that some applications must have been developed solely for this platform, such as SGI/Discreet, or OpenVMS/RDB for instance?

I'm very tempted to keep running eComStation (or Warp) as a virtual machine, as such, it would act as a server, and clients would "remote desktop" to it (preferably not vnc-only), I'm not sure which "connectors" are available for this purpose from a linux or irix machine?