OS/2 Archive

"As a long-time fan of GeoWorks Ensemble (now Breadbox Ensemble), a DOS based graphical user interface and office suite popular in the 80s, I've run it under a variety of operating systems and emulators over the years. You see, Ensemble requires an underlying operating system to provide a DOS compatible file system, not unlike early versions of Windows that required DOS. With the release of eComStation 2.0 I thought I'd revisit the challenge of getting Breadbox Ensemble running under OS/2 again but to add a further twist, since I didn't want to do this on a dedicated machine, I chose to see if I could get things running under VirtualBox."

"Previously, Java had been made available for OS/2 and eComStation by IBM, Golden Code and Innotek. However, new versions with many changes and improvements have been released since then and current applications require a current JVM implementation. The new project will port such a current JVM to OS/2 and eComStation. Dmitry Kumenov, who is well-known for his work on the Qt 3 and 4 ports, has been hired as chief developer. Funding is provided by several companies and individuals, with Mensys BV being the main sponsor."

"After a long delay, eComStation 2.0 GA will finally become reality. It will be released in time to be presented at the Warpstock Europe 2010 event which is held in Trier, Germany, from May 14 to 16. We consider eComStation 2.0 to be the biggest overhaul of OS/2 so far. Together with a team of both hired and volunteer developers, we have extended the functionality, removed limitations, updated hardware support as far as possible, and resolved close to 1000 issues that had been reported since the release of eComStation 1.2R. The new eComStation 2.0 GA is the result of several years of combined efforts and investments."

Now this is one for the rumour pile. Yes, a rumour about a long-gone (mostly) operating system that lots of people have fond memories of. Barbara Darrow, Senior News Director at SearchDataCenter.com, claims that IBM is mulling over a reintroduction of OS/2. Wait, what?

We're already nine days into the year 2010, and yet, eComStation 2.0 has not yet been released. The final release should've been released before the end of 2009, but December 31 came, and no release. Luckily, the eComStation team has released a statement, saying that the final release is definitely around the corner.

For some months now, independent developers have been working on a Qt4 port for eComStation, and it's almost ready. Some Qt4 applications have been ported to eCS, as well. This project is funded by donations from the eCS-OS2 community and currently they have 82% of the needed sum.

Serenity Systems International and Mensys BV have announced the immediate availability of eComStation 2.0 Silver Release for download on August 28th, 2009. This beta release RC7, codenamed "Silver Release", is available to Software Subscription subscribers. This release of eComStation 2.0 has been under development for a long time. This is demonstrated in the amount of issues resolved and the amount of code committed. For example, 259 bugs were resolved, of which 174 were "fixed" since the previous beta release (eCS 2.0 RC6a). Over 1450 commits were made since the release of eComStation v2.0 RC6a (beta).

Serenity Systems announced the availability of eComStation 2.0 RC6a. eComStation is the next evolution of IBM OS/2 operating System. Between the updated for this new RC are Audio, ACPI drivers and improved version of the bundled applications.

eComStation 2.0 RC5 is available for download for users with Software Subscriptions Services subscription. For those who don't know, eComStation is the next evolution of the OS/2 operating system.

"It just might be possible for Linux desktop users to get one of OS/2's best features: SOM (System Object Model). Of course, many of you are asking, 'SOM, What's the heck is SOM?' I'll tell you. It's a CORBA object-oriented shared library. Those of you who aren't programmers are doubtlessly staring cross-eyed at the screen right about now. For you: SOM is an easy-to-use universal programming library that both KDE and GNOME developers could use to create programs that would work in any Linux desktop environment."

IBM pretty much slammed the solid oak door on open sourcing os/2. "As stated in our response to your September 2005 letter we have considered the positioning of os/2 and open source several times in the past, and for a variety of business, technical, and legal reasons we have decided to not pursue any os/2 open source projects."

"Serenity Systems International is pleased to announce the availability of eComStation 2.0 RC4 for download. eComStation 2.0 will offer unparalleled performance with Bootable JFS and support for multi-core CPUs. This is the eighth public beta release of eComStation 2.0. This product is available for download to all registered eComStation customers with active Software Subscription Services. This version of eComStation 2.0 is the fourth Release Candidate, no big changes or additions will be added before the GA version, it mainly consists of updates to drivers and installation scripts."

The second release candidate of eComStation 2.0 has been released. "This is the sixth public beta release of eComStation 2.0. This product is available for download to all registered eCS customers with active Software Subscription Services (see this explanation). This version of eComStation 2.0 is the second Release Candidate, no big changes or additions will be added before the GA version, it mainly consists of updates to drivers and installation scripts."

"The latest release candidate for eComStation has been released and it has some new interesting features as well. We wanted to take a look at it to see how easy it is to install. Why? Well, for many users the installation procedure has been and still is a painfull chapter when it comes to OS2 and eComStation. So in this article we will primarily focus on how easy this RC1 release installs on various pieces of hardware."