From: dab6@po.CWRU.Edu (Douglas A. Bell)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: OS/2 Advocacy
Date: 27 Aug 92 17:42:38 GMT
Reply-To: dab6@po.CWRU.Edu (Douglas A. Bell)
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)


In a previous article, jim@tct.com (Jim Kunzman) says:

>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.


I won't be happy until I get my diamond speedstar24x working at 32k
colors at 800x600.  This will make vdm vga graphics in a window look 
really sharp.  Good by palette remapping and dithering.
  

>   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:  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.

A good idea, but it sounds like it would take a lot of rewiring.



>   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.

This is a very good idea.


>   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.

This is definitely something that the operating system should
support.  It should be able to backup in the back ground while
backing up all files.


>   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.

I'd just request an over all increase in stability.


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

Give hpfs386 to everyone once it is ready.  
IBM should make os/2 as good as they can.
Xref: sparky comp.os.os2.advocacy:4777 comp.os.os2.misc:28756