Re: help!

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

"Patricia M. Godfrey" wrote:

> What, please, is eCS? I'm interested in any alternative OSes. Have been loking at
> Linux, but the
> different file system is off-putting, though I seem to recall seeing
> something in the archives about XyW running nicely on Linux.

{A reprise of my reply to Morris on this subject, not long ago}

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> Recently mention has been made of an operating system - Ecomstation. Is
> this available by downloading or does it come in a package.

Not by download. It is developed (up from the OS/2 Warp 4.5 codebase) and
released by Serenity Systems, whose website can be found at:

http://www.serenity-systems.com

although the actual ordering and fulfillment is handled by Prism Dataworks:

http://www.prismdataworks.com/

It comes on 3 CDs, with no printed manual, although there is a (separate)
manual available for free d/l online, as a .PDF file. I can supply that URL if
you'd like. That might give you some notion of what you'd be getting yourself
into.

There are more deluxe packages of ECS available, if one wants dual-processor
support, entitlement to later releases within a certain time frame, or
enrollment in a Tech. Support program.

I think the initial base price is somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple
hundred $, unless you are upgrading from a license for OS/2 Warp 4.0. However,
that could be an introductory price, which may already have ended. As has been
mentioned here before, this is not a very easy OS to just jump into cold, with
no prior background . . . though it is by most accounts substantially easier to
learn
one's way around than is Linux. I would not recommend it to anyone who happens
to find W95/98 "difficult." It is much more technical than that, at least for
setup purposes, and the object-oriented GUI is different from the Windows world.

OS/2 (and therefore ECS) runs nearly all "legacy" DOS software superbly, and runs
the vast majority of 16-bit (i.e., made for Win 3.1) programs that were released
until around 1995. Those requiring a later version of the W32s extensions won't
run, however. An add-on product known as ODIN lets you run an ever-growing list of
32-bit (for W95 on) programs under this OS, with varying degrees of success. Steve
Crutchfield informs me that the current version of Nota Bene runs fine under ECS,
without a need for ODIN.

Jordan