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Voyager FAQ

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Voyager Frequently Asked Questions

Assembled by:

  • Adrian Gschwend, aka ktk

General

What is Voyager?

Voyager is the codename of the idea to have a WPS replacement on top of modern technology. This idea is the result of around 1.5 years of thinking a lot about what we can do in the future as current OS/2 and eComStation users. Note that it's absolutely impossible to write down in a few sentences what we plan to do, I had a speech at Warpstock Europe 2005 about it and this speech alone took 1.5 hours, you get the point :)

So before you continue you should probably consult:

Note that I will not do any discussions about if this is the way to go or not. Take it or leave it, it's our choice and we have our reasons.

How is this releated to OS/2 and eCS?

A lot and not much ;) Voyager is basically a reimplementation of a lot of ideas implemented in the WPS, the Workplace Shell of OS/2. As mentioned in the ALL06 PDF, the WPS has still unique concepts that are not implemented in any of the free well known desktops like Gnome or KDE. Our goal is to get the "WPS feeling" on top of new (but already existing) open source technology, more or less independent of the kernel used.

One of the main questions from current OS/2 and eCS users is for sure backward compatiblity. That gets addressed below.

How is this related to MacOS X?

I talk a lot about MacOS X in my presentation for various reasons:

  • The MacOS X Desktop does have a lot of things in common with the WPS, even if we just talk about some ideas and concepts here. The reason for this is quite simple: Apple, IBM and HP had a company called Taligent in the 90ies which worked on an object oriented OS. The project got cancelled in 1995 but some of the concepts survived. Beside this MacOS X is also inspired by NeXT, which has quite some ideas in common with the OS/2 WPS.
  • MacOS X is providing a powerful 2D engine called Quartz Extreme, we think this is the way to go nowadays and Voyager plans something like this with Cairo as 2D engine.
  • MacOS X is providing an X implementation for compatiblity with Unix applications. It's a similar approach like netlabs.org provides with Everblue.
  • Apple had to solve quite some problems we have as well with OS/2 and eCS at the moment (no real multiuser system, no real security concept etc). If you want to know more about that we recommend to read the Kernel Programming Guide at apple.com, it's always a good idea to learn from others.

Will netlabs.org stop providing software for OS/2 and eCS now?

Definitely not! We will continue to provide essential software for OS/2 the next years. Voyager is in our opinion a great option for the future but we know very well that it will take some time until you can use that as full replacement for what you use now.

The best choice you can do at the moment is to work with eComStation, version 2 of eCS will provide some essential enhancements, many of the ideas are planned for Voyager as well. So one could say that Voyager could become something like eComStation 3.0 once.

How can I support Voyager?

There are several possiblities:

  • We definitely need skilled developers. We have a wide range of tasks available, please consult the Voyager page to get an impression and join the mailinglist if you can contribute in some form.
  • Motivate skilled coders to help on the project. We think that the idea is very tempting and unique and we already successfuly motivated developers outside of the OS/2 and eCS community. This is essential for this project.
  • Buy eComStation. netlabs.org is working closely with SSI and Mensys to provide new software on eCS. Supporting eCS is thus an exellent way to also fund development of Voyager indirectly.
  • Buy netlabs.org sponsoring units in the Mensys shop, we get 100% of the amount you donate there!
  • Present Voyager at your local usergroup. We need to spread the word to motivate people to contribute in any form. For sure you are welcome to show the DivX of the presentation as well.

Technology

Will Voyager support my OS/2 and eCS applications?

That's a question we can't answer that easy at the moment. For sure it would be nice if we reach that state one day but that depends on quite a lot of things. There are several options:

  • use a virtual machine like XEN to run OS/2 or eCS in there. Will definitely work but is not a soft migration
  • implement the OS/2 base API on an existing Kernel to provide API compatibility. This could even be extended to binary compatibility if we work hard on it.
    • osFree has something in mind, see XXX as well (can't find the link :)
    • There is a project at Sourceforge which provides a base OS/2 API already on Linux, written by an IBM employee. This library is not complete yet but provides a base to work on
  • implement at least parts of GPI and PM on top of an existing 2D engine like Cairo for PM compatibility. This is a very big task and we are not sure if it is worth doing that but if a group of people volunteers to write that, get in contact with us on the Voyager mailinglist. Note that such a project should definitely integrate well with our idea, otherwise it will not help at all.

In short one can say that binary compatibility is technically possible up to a certain point at least. One can debate about if this is useful or not.

Why something new? There is Gnome, KDE...

Why not X?

This project is too big, you will fail

Maybe. But honestly without trying you wont know...

Development

Under what license will Voyager be released?

The license will be liberal so using Voyager will not be restricted. On the other hand it will assure that Voyager remains open source. It will not be GPL.

Where can I download sourcecode?

Once the license is defined there will be a subversion tree on netlabs.

Should I still work on OS/2 and eCS applications?

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