[GEM Development] NextGEM website and release date

[Shane M. Coughlan]

> So instead of improving GEM and making it more capable, you're going to
> use unix and KDE and _call_ it GEM.  How astonishingly lame.
>
> g.

Oh no!  Oh no!  There is a cunning bit you see...OpenGEM will continue as
the 16bit OS I'm working on, and the Unix will be my 32/64bit toy for a
specific purpose (high security computing).  At the moment the guys at
www.maxframe.com are playing with OpenGEM to get it working on REAL/32, a
32bit DOS, and I am monitoring FreeDOS32.  If the userbase of low-end
machines needs it I will be continuing OpenGEM as a more mature 16bit system
(remember, soon it becomes one with FreeDOS and is a full OS distro), and
then it'll become a 32bit distro that will run very well on 386 machines
with 2megs of RAM.  If Ben and co get multitasking working sometime (hint
hint) it would be great.

I think GEM is limited as a GUI, but useful.  I think it has a life BUT not
on high end hardware.
I think *NIX systems are too hard to set up and maintain and that the
advantages they offer are almost overshadowed by this.
I think I can address both these problems.
OpenGEM for the first one
NextGEM (Unix) for the second.
Once I have NextGEM running I will be getting it to run OpenGEM through
DOSEMU.  I will also be working to get some filters made to convert docs
made in OpenGEM applications to stuff that can be read by KOffice and
OpenOffice.  The EVENTUAL idea would be to have two systems (one for low low
end hardware and one for more powerful hardware) that can interact well with
each other.
Some of the framework for this has been accomplished in another way by Heinz
lately, as we had a request for networking with OpenGEM.  He got networking
running fine with OpenGEM 2.1.0 and GEMWeb using MS Client.
You see, I am pushing for a complete development model.  I would not call it
lame so much as necessary.

Regards

Shane
http://gem.shaneland.co.uk