OSNews

My understanding is that eComStation pricing is dictated to a large degree by the per-license fee that IBM charges Serenity for the OS/2 element of each copy of eCS sold. I think that Serenity would love to sell eCS more cheaply, if it could.

Why is it relatively expensive compared to retail linux distros?

Got my answer in the above post i think.

Edited 2006-09-20 14:18

I don't know any retail linux version for $ 190,00. Do you? BTW: We're not talking about any enterprise Linux version.

A 1-person license for RHEL WS is 280 DKK, that'll be 47.57 USD. And that's one-third of the price for a XP Home license.

Yup. The pricing effectively reduces their potential market to current OS/2 users like myself and to a few business users. And maybe to a few very curious people who are willing to spend that kind of money.

It's a shame.

Yep, I'd be more than willing to try out OS/2 if I could get it more easily - even a time-limited LiveCD would be better than the current options.

They do have a free liveCD, but, that isn't really what I'm looking for - I know the basic feature set already, and I know that I couldn't justify spending $190.00 on it.

There *is* a liveCD for eComStation:

http://www.ecomstation.com/democd/

I agree wholeheartedly - C'mon IBM (if they are the ones placing this barrier on the retail price), if you won't open source OS2, at least give it a better chance in its renewed guise of eComStation!

I agree. Even the academic version is double what I can pay at the moment. It'll take three months to get the amount unless I want to eat porridge for dinner everyday

Owner of that company is Menso. I think it's not a weird name in Netherlands, maybe sounds bad in english only

Not AFAIK. But of course I could be wrong. But IBM has EOL'ed OS/2, so I don't think it's buyable anymore.

They haven't sold it public for some time - very few IBM employees the last few years even know what OS/2 is.

But on their OS/2 website theres a log-on for Existing and large enterprise customers.

Remember if there's a profit, there's nothing IBM will not sell to anybody.

Version 2.0 addresses some of your concerns:

Multiple users - I believe this is coming in the new version.

Accelerated 2D support for hundreds of graphics cards (plus some 3D I think, but I'm not entirely sure). Mind you, eCS is *not* the right platform if your main use is mainly games and 3D modelling!

I think that there is a Flash 8 player knocking about. At least there are rumours of one. Personally, I can live quite happily without Flash!

The interface may *look* like Win 95 (I think it looks better, but each to their own), but it is far, far superior. Fully OO, scriptable and extendable with user-defined classes, etc.

Personally, I could not recommend eCS to anyone new to OS/2, simply because it's always going to be a struggle to get support/software. However, for OS enthusiasts and OS/2 fans more specifically, it is very good indeed.

Think of what is at current level, for what is such a minority OS:
OO2
Apache Web Server 2
PHP5
MySQL (I think a v5 is available, ceratainly v4 is)
Java is getting there, although it usually lags a little behind Windows/OSX/Linux/etc
Pixel
Firefox
Seamonkey
Thunderbird
Video player the name of whcih escapes me right now... Very good though.
many more...

So it's certainly a perfectly capable home/dev OS.

Yes, it is a shame as many of you have said with regards to the price - eCS deserves a wider audience.

Edited 2006-09-20 21:28

AFAIK there will be no 3D Acceleration support - the driver is delivered by a third party developer, which makes it very difficult.

Most hardware manufacturers have no problem releasing their 2D specs for third party developers under NDA (Except nVidia, that releases nothing to nobody) - but when it comes to 3D specs they all refuse, I guess in order to eliminate the risk of a leak.

In short - if you want 3D accelerated drivers for your OS, the hardware manufactorer of your graphics processor/card must deliver it yourselves or you'll have to reverse engineer the driver.

But hopefully, I'm wrong - I would love hardware accelerated OpenGL on my eCS Box :o)

Edited 2006-09-21 09:57

Weird...
the functionality is way beyond that of Windows.

Try changing the fonts in Windows by dragging the font to the window...

Or changing the color of the titlebar by dragging the color to the titlebar...

It's very functional - it just does things very differently.

Well, some of still like using it.

As long as a small market exists, it'll probably continue to be improved.

OS/2 (or eCS) probably has the best desktop implementation of all OS'es and still has a high potential.

It's less of a corpse than Vista is.