EComStation
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eComStation Screenshot
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| Developer | Serenity Systems, IBM, Microsoft, and other various developers |
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| OS family | OS/2 |
| Working state | Current |
| Source model | Closed source |
| Latest release | 2.1 / May 20, 2011 |
| License | Proprietary Software with open-source components |
| Official website | www |
eComStation or eCS is a PC operating system based on OS/2, published by Serenity Systems and Mensys BV and currently owned and developed by XEU.com. It includes several additions and accompanying software not present in the IBM version of the system.
eComStation is a 32-bit operating system which runs exclusively on the x86 processor architecture (real or virtualized) and is still used as of 2016[update].
Version 1 of eComStation, released in 2001, was based around the integrated OS/2 version 4.5 client Convenience Package for OS/2 Warp version 4, which was released by IBM in 2000. The latter had been made available only to holders of existing OS/2 support contracts; it included the following new features (among others) compared to the final retail version of OS/2 (1996's OS/2 Warp version 4):
eComStation provided a retail channel for end users to obtain these updates. In addition, from the beginning it bundled a number of additional features and enhancements, including (but not limited to):
As IBM began to wind down OS/2 development, Serenity and its partners began to take up the slack (through a combination of in-house, contract, and community/open source development efforts) in terms of keeping the operating system usable on current hardware. The results of many of these efforts are included in version 2 of eComStation; among others:
When it became clear that IBM would not release any new retail version of the OS/2 Warp client operating system after version 4 in 1996, users began to consider other alternatives. IBM released a final version of its server edition, IBM OS/2 Warp Server for e-Business or WSeB, internally called version 4.5. IBM also continued updating the client and merged parts of it with the server, so it was proposed by Bob St. John of Serenity Systems, that an OEM company could and should create its own client, using the existing OS/2 client with IBM enhancements and adding its own improvements where needed. But Serenity as an IBM business partner had done a similar thing with OS/2-based vertical applications like the Serenity Managed Client, a rapid deployment OS based on Workspace On-Demand, and Ecomstation Server, a managed server based on WSeB. The OS/2 software vendor Stardock made such a proposal to IBM in 1999, but it was not followed through by the company.
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