From: jim@tct.com (Jim Kunzman)
Subject: OS/2 Advocacy
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 14:31:06 GMT
Organization: TC Telemanagement, Clearwater, FL

Now that the OS religious wars have settled down, this group needs
to have some life put back into it.  Since the topic is supposed to
be advocacy, I would like to see some advocacy for new features
for OS/2 posted here.  I would be happy to collect messages and
periodically summarize requests.  Since IBM representatives monitor
usenet's OS/2 groups, this might be a good place to provide feedback.

To start the bandwagon rolling, here are my requests for improvements
to OS/2:

   Proposal:  Solid support for SVGA in 256 colors.
  Rationale:  Isn't this obvious?  IBM should do everything possible
              to ensure success of OS/2 with the current defacto
              video standard.  SVGA is it.  VGA is passe.

   Proposal:  Message queue per process in PM.
  Rationale:  No single process should ever be able to block other
              processes.  This deficiency can sometimes even block
              normal shutdown.

   Proposal:  Fix shutdown to work all the time.
  Rationale:  Many users have reported that they have to use the
              three fingered salute (Ctrl-Alt-Del) to shutdown.
              This may be related to PM's single message queue
              mentioned above.  In any event it needs to be
              fixed.

   Proposal:  Support for fork() system call.
  Rationale:  This is required by POSIX and would facilitate porting
              several significant UNIX programs to OS/2, e.g. bash.

   Proposal:  Solid support for Novell networks.
  Rationale:  Current Novell drivers work fine in OS/2, however, 
              numerous users report difficulties when switching
              to VDMs, especially full-screen VDMs.  IBM should
              work closely with Novell to resolve these problems.
              I'd hate to see NT support NetWare better than OS/2.

   Proposal:  Loader should be fixed so that most boot errors,
              missing drivers, etc. don't cause loading to halt
              awaiting human interaction.
  Rationale:  OS/2 is supposed to support mission critical
              applications.  This means that a reboot should
              be possible without human interaction.

   Proposal:  Power loss shouldn't require human interaction
              on reboot (chkdsk).
  Rationale:  OS/2 is supposed to support mission critical
              applications.  This means that a reboot should
              be possible without human interaction.  As OS/2
              currently exists, chkdsk must often be run from
              floppy disk to make drive C: usable.

   Proposal:  IBM should supply a memory test facility to confirm
              that OS/2 will run on a given system.
  Rationale:  Currently OS/2 exercises memory much harder than any
              other operating system, sans UNIX.  Yet there is no
              suitable tool to test memory for compatibility with
              OS/2.

   Proposal:  OS/2 needs a seamless way to backup files.
  Rationale:  Backup and restore are primitive tools.  EAs add a new
              dimension.  Files in use currently cannot be backed
              up easily.  The only good way to backup all files
              is to boot OS/2 from floppy and backup without PM
              present, in a single tasking mode.

   Proposal:  Improve memory protection, primarily in VDMs.
  Rationale:  Several people still report problems being able
              to lock OS/2.  Most of these problems occur when
              running DOS applications, especially Windows
              applications.

   Proposal:  HPFS support for large removable media.
  Rationale:  FAT is not suitable for large media.  It is very
              slow walking a FAT tree.  HPFS is the only solution.

   Proposal:  Faster window opening/closing.
  Rationale:  It's too slow.  Hopefully the 32bit GDI will cure this.

   Proposal:  Less disk thrashing when opening/closing windows.
  Rationale:  OS/2 seems to go to disk to do everything.  If I open
              a window and close it and subsequently reopen it there
              are several disk accesses.  These should not be required.

   Proposal:  Hard and symbolic links should be supported.
  Rationale:  These save disk space and make maintaining systems much
              more efficient.  They also enhance network connectivity.

   Proposal:  Increase HPFS performance.
  Rationale:  UNIX file systems still seem faster.  OS/2 should equal
              or exceed UNIX file system performance.

I have about twenty more requests, but these should be enough to get
things rolling.  I'd like to hear from others.  If you want to email
them, fine, send them to me, jim@tct.com.  Please indicate if you wish
to remain anonymous, otherwise I will quote your email.  I will try
to summarize all news posts periodically with appropriate credits.

To make it easier for me to get a grep on your posts, please include
the word advocacy in the Subject: line.  Thanks.
-- 
Jim Kunzman at Teltronics/TCT     <jim@tct.uucp>, <uunet!pdn!tct!jim>
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OS/2 2.0 - 1,000,000+ copies sold.  Sweet dreams Mr. Balmy.