Essential Software for OS/2?

[Michael Kerpan]

I'm reviving an old Pentium II as a retro PC with the power of OS/2. While I'm mainly using OS/2 so that I can get good DOS support without having to actually worry about stuff like CD-ROM drivers eating up conventional memory and other horrors that come with real DOS, I'd also like to have a selection of OS/2 software installed. Any hints as to what I should be looking for on Hobbes?

[Dave Yeo]

Post by Michael Kerpan
I'm reviving an old Pentium II as a retro PC with the power of OS/2. While I'm mainly using OS/2 so that I can get good DOS support without having to actually worry about stuff like CD-ROM drivers eating up conventional memory and other horrors that come with real DOS, I'd also like to have a selection of OS/2 software installed. Any hints as to what I should be looking for on Hobbes?

Depends on what you want to do. There's lots of programs that various
people would consider essential depending on their workload and whether
OS/2 is their main OS or secondary. For me a web browser, email client
and development environment amongst others are essential. While they can
be all found on Hobbes, for many there are newer versions that haven't
found themselves to Hobbes yet. Look at svn.netlabs.org for an example.
Dave

[Michael Kerpan]

Post by Dave Yeo
Depends on what you want to do. There's lots of programs that various
people would consider essential depending on their workload and whether
OS/2 is their main OS or secondary. For me a web browser, email client
and development environment amongst others are essential. While they can
be all found on Hobbes, for many there are newer versions that haven't
found themselves to Hobbes yet. Look at svn.netlabs.org for an example.
Dave

Lots of that stuff looks like it needs more "oomph" than an old Pentium II with only 128 megs of RAM has. Certainly anything relying on QT will crawl. I'm generally more interested in things that are UNIQUE to OS/2 and will run well on old hardware.

Mike

[A.D. Fundum]

Post by Michael Kerpan
I'm generally more interested in things that are UNIQUE to OS/2
and will run well on old hardware.

Dave almost managed to mention all expections. Don't use a webbrowser
newer than "Mozilla" v1.x (main problem: memory), don't use an office
suite (main problem: memory) based on another platform, don't expect
to be able to watch animations/movies larger than a stamp (main
problem: CPU speed). This applies to both OS/2 and eComStation.

Some apps will require an updated OS (Fixpak, OS level), but most
must-haves will be older than that. A modern must-have is a browser,
but your system will be too old to really use it anyway. Must-haves
depend on what you're doing indeed, or what you're trying to show.

I've installed OS/2 v4 on machines (80486, Pentium I) which are too
old for eComstation. Mainly for testing purposes, but also because a
few apps need an old video driver. A Pentium II, preferably with all
memory upgrades one can install, can be used quite normally. I don't
have "new" hardware in use, for one becasue the latest versions of the
OS aren't available in my prefered language just yet. Of bleedin'
course old hardware, even with more than enough memory installed, is
slow. It'll take about one minute to launch a modern webbrowser,
despite of the small overhead of the OS itself.

I have one buyware DOS game, Terminal Velocity, which apparently does
require DOSBox and a far faster Pentium IV CPU, but the freeware
version should work quite fine with your hardware.


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