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IBM To Release OS/2 Warp 4 With 'Convenience Packs'
Bushwacker writes: "Recently, the OS/2 SuperSite has announced some big (somewhat unfortunate) news about the Warp Client v.4. There's both good and bad news here: First the bad news -- Contrary to hopeful rumours spreading around, A Warp version 5 will not come out this year, if ever. IBM will instead release 'Convenience Packs' which are like FixPacks, but cost you money. The good news -- Unlike the free FixPacks,
Convenience Packs will provide more important upgrades which cover a larger field than their lesser cousins. Maybe one of them will include the fabled Project Odin?
At least XFree86 is still free ..."
I was standing at an ATM here in St. Louis and inserted my card. The ATM froze, spit out my card, and rebooted. It was kind of interesting watching the ATM boot OS/2 v.3.
And OCE printers/copiers, the 3165's anyway, use OS/2 for the print server.
And until a few months ago, OS/2 ran the voicemail system here.
The problem lies in the fact that while Windows formats a floppy (or writes a large file to it, for that matter), the rest of the system grinds to a halt. You just have to wait until the system is done with the floppy before you can do other things with the computer. Note that this is my experience with Windows as of Windows 95. 98 may well have fixed the problem.
--Phil (But I doubt it.)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
Why? Because of all the desktop OSes I've tried, OS/2 is still the one I'm most comfortable in. I can use most of the Linux apps I want (slrn, pine, lynx, links, XFree86, GIMP) alongside the OS/2 tools I like (FTE, FileJet, 4OS2, Embellish, StarOffice, ColorWorks) and a few Windows things (AOLPress, ABC Snapgrafix, Drafix CAD), and if I want to take time out to play a DOS game like MAME or Quake or Descent or whatever I can do that too.
It's still a pretty neat OS, really. See my web site for a screen snapshot. I use Linux too, of course, and dabble in a few other things, but the OS/2 setup is still my mainstay.
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-Rich (OS/2, Linux, BeOS, Mac, NT, Win95, Solaris, FreeBSD, and OS2200 user in Bloomington MN)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
...and I *do* have a box at home running it. But there's so damn little SOFTWARE available for it that it's sometimes VERY hard to do stuff.
And keep in mind that I'm an OS/2 user bitching about a lack of software in the BeOS. I'm used to slim pickings in some contexts.
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-Rich (OS/2, Linux, BeOS, Mac, NT, Win95, Solaris, FreeBSD, and OS2200 user in Bloomington MN)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I generally use FM/2 as my file manager (a nice third-party PM app that seamlessly handles ZIP files and other things). Switching tasks is a fast process --use Control-Esc (or a mouse chord) to being up a task list. I also use Xit's task menu sometimes.
I run Warp in 1280x1024, and the fonts are fine.
It sounds to me like you were expecting a Windows interface. OS/2 isn't Windows!
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-Rich (OS/2, Linux, BeOS, Mac, NT, Win95, Solaris, FreeBSD, and OS2200 user in Bloomington MN)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
You've forgotten that "Netscape 2.02" for OS/2 was an IBM port which used the Navigator 2.x interface bolted onto the Navigator 3.x rendering engine. It wasn't all that far behind its counterpart on other operating systems.
You also seem to forget that various apps did in fact exist like ColorWorks, DeScribe, AmiPro/2, Mesa/2, and that Windows 3.1 applications (don't laugh, there are some good quality programs that were writted for that API) ran very well under OS/2.
Personally, I'm glad that folks are porting things from Linux to Warp. Why? Because even though I have three dedicated Linux boxes at home (soon to be four), I still vastly prefer OS/2 to Linux as a general desktop box, and the ported Linux utilities and applications give me more software to play with.
I don't think I understand your apparent problem with that...why the hell do *WE* have to use what *YOU* want to use???
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-Rich (OS/2, Linux, BeOS, Mac, NT, Win95, Solaris, FreeBSD, and OS2200 user in Bloomington MN)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Er, no. You see - OS/2 up until version 1.3 was *written by* microsoft!
Reinout
Yep, this works just fine. My machine runs Warp 4, Slack 7 and Win98 without any of them bothering a single bit.
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
The OS/2 ports of Gnome, E, and KDE are not to replace the WPS. They're to be used with XFree86/OS2 for the running of X11 apps on OS/2.
Look also at the Everblue Project whose purpose is to create a "Presentation Manager" version of Xfree86.
Everblue's goal is to make it possible to port X11 program to OS/2 by doing a simple re-compile. The ported program is then a native OS/2 program, and does not require X11 support via Xfree86/OS2. 32BitsOnline has an interview with Adrian Gschwend that has more info.
There's a lot going on in the OS/2 community, Slashdot just tends to ignore it. Sad really, the OS/2 community and the Linux community can do a lot to help each other out; afterall, The enemy of my enemy is my friend :-)
Considering it was ahead of a lot of the competion, quite well. There's only two this I wish were better, USB and DVD support. USB support exists, but ONLY for the intel chipset. Drivers to read the DVD are now available, but no player exists.
Thanks, no, I don't want my secret identity published in Slashdot, it's full of scary people (like myself :) ).
:) . The problem is that the only Cockney I have is from the Internet Oracle postings, so I gather that th->f and "quid (singular!)" are Cockney enough, but I am not sure about "'undred".
Yes, it's my creation
Can somebody confirm?
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Amiga coverage in Slashdot is higher than OS/2, and most of the time it's just vapor.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Would "Free as in free 'undred quid, my china" be overkill?
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Consistency.
A problem (or is it a feature?) with OS/2 is that you can have PM apps, WPS apps, DOS apps, WinOS/2 apps, VIO (textmode) apps, Java AWT apps, Java Swing apps, X apps. Very useful but each with a different UI.
Being CORBA based (SOM was an early CORBA)
Umm. Since DSOM is distributed SOM (ergo, distributed CORBA), would it be very difficult to interact WPS and Gnome through Corba?
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
There is an equivalent API: DIVE (Direct Interface to Video Extensions) but I can't compare both.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I have heard about Win2000 destroying OS/2 Boot Manager and Lilo if on the same disk on every boot, but I have heard it is not true as well.
:)
Then I have heard of tricks to circumvent.
You'd better check somedbody else
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
IBM almost certainly signed contracts that required them to continue supporting OS/2. This is simply an outgrowth of that. IBM could care less about the hobbyist market, in fact, it is hard to say if they ever cared about them at all.
If I'm gonna use an unsupported OS, I'll use BeOS. At least Be cares about the community...
-Teman
There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.
Ahh, I loved that.. Oops, didn't shutdown.. Hey, guess what doesn't work now. That's right - your HPFS partition! Time to reinstall.
OS/2 was rad when all you ran were win3.1 and dos apps. Now it isn't.
OS/2 users -> run linux! (or even better, FreeBSD!)
-Teman
There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.
That isn't saying very much.. :) Of course it is more stable than 9x. Cuz 9x is the least stable OS ever invented. :)
(Although, some of the macs may occasionally give it a run for it's money)
I'm more interested in comparisons to NT.
NT's stability seems directly tied to what drivers and hardware you are using. Some are good. Some are very, very bad. Guess that's what you get when too much stuff runs in kernel mode.
The only 2k crashes I've got have been driver related (sound, CDRW DMA mode, etc).
-Teman
There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.
Right now Bank of America uses it in all of their
;p (plus that same server will also run SMTP, HTTPD, Telnet, and FTP services simultaniously as well without any noticable slowdown, handling 10,000 hits a day to the web server without a blink.)
branches and throughout the company, that's why I stick with them as my banking service provider.
I personally use it for any Server installs I set up, and I build household network firewall systems for people. My common install is a IBM PS/2 9595 (DX2/66) with 64MB of RAM and a 1.2 gig SCSI HD and 2 3COM MicroChannel NIC cards which I can put together all for about 60-80 dollars (my cost). I install Warp Client (which is $300 yikes) and InJoy firewall (for IPSEC) ($30 for 2 users). So for $400 you have a transparent firewall server that never needs rebooted. Never needs to be touched, turn it on and forget about it...
Then again, there's McDonalds which is installing Windows based systems to run their drive-through windows and every other time I pull up, the screen is down showing some kind of Windows error. =p
Seriously... OS/2 is basically a scaled down single user Unix variant. Just spend some time tweaking configurations on an OS/2 box for a little while and tell me I'm wrong. ;p
Besides, OS/2 is great if you ever decide to upgrade to giant power, you can move right up to AIX fairly cleanly.
Please tell me you don't think OS/2 is a version of Linux or Unix.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
"For example, what does DosEnterCriticalSection() do? How am I supposed to know that it does NOT operate like win32's EnterCriticalSection..."
:)
Actually, the OS/2 version made more sense...you were entering a critical section of code that needed the CPU...with Windows you're lucky to guess at the meaning even after reading the docs (I have VC++ 6.0 now and some of the MFC docs aren't even complete!)
The OS/2 API's were categorized based on their applicability to the programmer (OS, Windowing, System, Graphics, Profile, etc). Try wading into the Win32 API without a map. The only thing that helps there is a 3rd paty book on the subject. At least with OS/2 you could reasonably guess where you had to look for something and then you could usually figure out what the params were with just the header files.
Just my 2 cents...
P.S. You do sound like you're whining..
umm, no more than 3 years ago, Prudential Securities was still using it for their day to day trading (I don't know if they still use it, but if you go on the speed of business they probably are).
:)
I still have WARP running on a machine here still, somewhat only for nostalgia, but in general b/c I just always loved OS/2, and I probably always will.
Back in my 386SX - 16 days (5mb of ram) OS/2 was the best thing you could get (desqview or win31 were you only options for "multitasking") and when you run a BBS and still want to use your computer for something worthwhile, OS/2 was the way to go.
Enough of my blabbering, sorry for the rambling
I would have emailed this to you... but for obvious reasons can't :)
.sig source (your creation? - I want to be able to reference it :) )
What's the
Believe with me, my saplings.
I expect that Linux, QNX, BSD, Windows CE (urg) will take over most of these roles, but probably not for a while.
While it's true that the Workspace object model is very nice, its visual polish and ease of use has fallen badly behind Windows and the Mac. I have gone nearly mad from navigating zillions of tabbed property pages, and the way the tabs themselves look and behave are pretty frustrating. In addition, either WM or PM doesn't enforce visual consistency, so you can tell when a feature or object emerged in OS/2 2, 3, or 4, depending on what it looks like. I haven't used Unix GUIs except for NeXTStep, so I don't know how they compare.
And while WM's SOM-based model is great, most users can get the same benefits from shell and OLE 2 integration under Win32 (coupled with the Windows Scripting Host), and host of APIs glued together with AppleScript on the Mac. As well are all too well aware, end user do not care about cleanliness of architecture. And sadly, OS/2 is basically the last refuge of SOM -- DSOM is dead, bascially, even though IBM should have pushed it as the best way to build CORBA objects, instead of using a rat's nest of specific language and ORB vendor CORBA bindings.
MS AND IBM wrote OS/2. Primarially IBM while MS wrote this program called Windows to get people used to the basic idea of a GUI.
Some times IBM comes through. Sometimes they don't. For example the same day the OS/2 news came out, the AS/400 group announced that they were discontinuing the Firewall for AS/400 product, which was based on OS/2. The reason? OS/2 was a dead end. A couple of thousand of Firewall users are very unhappy right now because they spent money and time on this product and now they're going to have to switch to another firewall.
Steven
Editor at Large, Sm@rt Reseller
I know a little about OS/2, having managed 20-odd servers running 2.11 and 3.0 some years back.
Our main problem wasn't missing drivers, it's that the drivers that were there were pretty poorly written. Driver for common network cards (Intel and 3Com) would crash under load. Installation was a bitch -- in one case you had to boot DOS, run a config program which gave you some magic number, and then add that magic number to your OS/2 CONFIG.SYS before it the hardware would work correctly. And that was easy compared to the voodoo I had to go through to get a SCSI adapter working.
The networking in OS/2 was seriously lame-brained. Configuration was a nightmare of ugly control panels full of big blue jargon and TLAs. And that is if you could get networking -- it wasn't included in the base product until Warp Client v3 shipped in about 1994. When we were running 2.1, it was a maze of twisty P/Ns, all seemingly alike. Even basic TCP/IP support was an expensive add-on. IPX support was only available through a orphened Novell cleint that used *different* network drivers than the native OS, and which in turned required a troublesome ODI/NDIS shim driver.
Furthermore, the dreaded "single input queue" problem bit my ass so many times I just have to tell you about it. Server was up, working fine, the GUI was locked hard. Nothing to do but to wait until 6PM and push the powerswitch and then pray to the CHKDSK gods.
The bundled toolset was pretty poor. As "powerful" as the WPS was, the tools were buried in a confusing 6-layer deep folder hierarchy. That is, if you could find an icon at all -- it was usually easier to launch the GUI stuff from a command prompt. The best GUI file browser bundled with the system was the Win 3.1 File Manager, which should tell you how bad the PM Drives Object was. We even had to get shareware to even do basic system monitoring like 'top' or the NT task manager/performance monitor.
I want to say that OS/2 was OK for what we were asking it to do. But, for a combination of technical and marketing reasons, it was really a big pain in the ass to manage. I'd never felt like a bigger reboot monkey. Eventually we switched the servers to WinNT 3.51, and our uptimes increased exponentially. Given the average slashdotter's opinon of WinNT, that really doesn't say much for OS/2.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Right on. Unfortunately for IBM, they delivered the perfect solution for DOS power users just at the time when DOS was being killed off.
A long time ago, I worked at a place that had a DOS-based database server (some sort of XBase, I forget). Running on a 16MB OS/2 machine, we tricked the program into thinking it had 32MB of extended memory and ran with 15 concurrant users when the thing was only supported with 3 or 4.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
A few years ago we were getting some telephone equipment installed. The technician attached a small VGA monitor to the voice mail system and booted it up. Lo and Behold "Microsoft OS/2 1.3" was coming up.
Since that product was supposedly long dead, I asked him about it. He said that although it doesn't appear on any offical price list, you can still call up someone at Microsoft and get a new copy of OS/2 1.3 on CD-ROM for about $300 a pop. It works, it's very stable. (Although, I don't know how they handled the Y2K certification...)
Whenever I hear about "Embedded NT", I always wonder if Microsoft is still selling a few more copies of OS/2 1.3 than they'd like to admit for embedded applications. When you read the stories here, it's pretty clear that OS/2 is pretty established in that market.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Linux users already have the Gnome and KDE object environments -- I don't think there's much room or demand for another one. Only old OS/2 users would be interested.
What IBM could do would be to release some of the SOM infrastructure. Or, perhaps just give the Gnome team a walkthrough of WPS's feature set. With a little time and effort the WPS can probably be cloned, and it can probably be done in a way that fits in with the existing infrastructures and in a sufficently Unixy way.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I've heard a couple reasons for Microsoft's fallout with IBM:
1) Serious culture clash. IBMers didn't like the hairy barefoot Microsoft guys. IBM was doing things like giving MS programers "demerits" for doing things like not cleaning up their desk before they went home or playing Frisbee on the lawn.
2) IBM was never seriously behind OS/2 as an application server. They were afraid that it might cut into their midrange business. Instead, IBM's vision of OS/2 was pretty much limited to a client for IBM mainframe applications. This made it difficult for Microsoft to sell products like SQL Server. Considering Microsoft's success with NT as an application server, MS was right on this one -- OS/2 just missed that entire market.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Hehe so it is not just me that has problems with BSD and RAM, when the RAM works fine on any other system.
>>The order was 2.0, 2.1, 3.0 (Warp), 4.0 (Merlin)
You're right:-) Then again, being a OS/2 user, you couldn't really be wrong;-) Wonder if there is a support group for former OS/2 users...
OS/2 is the OS where they got the desktop right.
Je ne parle pas francais.
Just a little warning.
My understanding is that OS/2 1.3, which was the last version worked on by both M$ and IBM, used the old 'Windows 3.1' desktop. OS/2 v2.0 and up was a huge rewrite with the new object oriented desktop.
Je ne parle pas francais.
There never was a OS/2 2.2, it was 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, 4.0 (warp).
Je ne parle pas francais.
I doubt it.. but I wouldn't be surprised of Project Odin tried to support it.
Actually, Caldera owns DRDOS now, and they do have an upgrade: Caldera Linux. :-)
But to most people, a word processor isn't a Word Processor unless it's MS Word, and a spreadsheet isn't a Spreadsheet unless it's MS Excel.
.DOCument, its rubbish.
Not true. I think to most people a word processor isn't a word processor if it can't read MS Word file formats. Where I work we're a service oriented company, and our upgrades (and user demand) for new versions of WP software has never been motivated by the 'newness' or features in MS Office releases, it's been so that we can open the *.doc files we get from the client.
I think that the user base would actually prefer fewer IT-marketing-trend features, complications and OS 'integration' than provided by the current crop of MS Office applications. I know the BOFH would, the helpless desk would, and the PHB would like to pay the smaller cost presumably associated with a smaller application, too. But unless the 'superior' WP can open a client's
Heh. I don't think so. The appearance of the widgets is not what makes WPS so cool. The cool thing is how it works, and that's not something you can just emulate with a theme.
It's unfortunate that projects like Gnome/KDE/Enlightenment allowed themselves to be inspired by such a weak and archaic GUI as Win9x. Since they had the advantage of hindsight, they could have copied WPS instead.
What this reveals about those projects is that they are not really attempts to give Unix a good GUI; they are attempts to give Unix a mainstream GUI. Those are two very different goals.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, or think I'm full of shit, then please try out OS/2 some time. If you're interested in GUIs in general, then it's worth your time. Maybe you can find a Warp 3 in a bargain bin somewhere.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Since the WPS was, and still is, one of the best GUIs ever, maybe people who would like to see such a port should prod IBM gently but firmly and tell them. Heck, I'd pay good money for WPS for Linux...
I work in document processing at a bank and we use AS/400 for the back end and text stuff and Warp 4 for graphical applications like viewing checks... I also used to work retail and the cahs registers used OS/2 although i think it was 2.11. Financial institutions and places where they need total reliability still use it. No, it's not the consumer OS that IBM tried with 1.3 and then with Warp 3 (remember those cool ads in PC Magazine and the TV ads?) but for rock sodild reliability, a GUI that is still un parallelled you can't beat it. I still have and HPFS artition with warp 4 on it that i use on a regular basis but the hardware supposrt isn't there so that makes it tough. And the fact that IBM isn't changing the version number wth the release of the convience packs doesn't mean they aren't major upgrades. The warpcast ariticle stated that they would bring the Warp 5 server kernel over as well as some other very big changes. IBM may not be into the scrap-all-your-hardware-every-six-months-to-get-a- new-version-number game but i still think they do one HELL of a job with support, better then just about any other company i've dealt with.
Ryan Dorman, CCNA Network Communications Specialist Millersville Univesrity
I'm sorry, but for all you KDE'ers and GNOME'ers, you have got to simply WORSHIP OS/2's PM desktop. It is the BEST. Object oriented DnD Desktop.
:-)
If they ever open sourced that puppy it would SLAUGHTER what is out there now. (Granted I'd rather see it merged with KDE... but that's another idea....)
Johnny O
OS/2 is _still_ a great OS.
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I still run it on the newest desktops and laptops with no problems.
IBM can not afford to stop work on OS/2...contrary to popular belief, OS/2 is still very much alive and well. IBM draws (as of last year) over $1billion in direct and indirect services related to OS/2.
It may not be on _your_ desktop, but take a look here and see where it is used:
http://rover.wiesbaden.netsurf.de/~meile/los2cl
Yeah, yeah, a lot of people think OS/2 is dead, but it's not. I use a lot of computers day in and out as part of my job. Win95/98, WinNT, Solaris, MacOS, HP-UX, even Linux (heck I even have that on all my machines).
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My personal choice of OS? Still OS/2. For the best COMBINATION of stability, ease of use, ease of install and administration, OS/2 wins hands down.
IBM cannot give up on OS/2 because it derives very significant revenue from OS/2. Here are some of IBM's biggest customers:
http://rover.wiesbaden.netsurf.de/~meile/los2cl
OS/2 has no drivers? No way! I still run OS/2 nicely on the latest home-brew PC's and laptops from IBM and Toshiba. I actually _don't_ have Linux on all the machines because I can't get Linux drivers for all the hardware.
No Applications for OS/2? Also false! No games, maybe, but application-wise, you can get pretty big name and useful apps for just about everything. It is at least on par with Linux (though not for long).
No support? Very, very false! IBM regularly releases Fixpacks for OS/2 which are available FREE of charge. They contain bug-fixes and sometimes new functionality. In fact, the latest Fixpak (FP13) was released just last week or so. How's _that_ for support? IBM still officially supports OS/2 for all its Thinkpad laptops (except the i-series)
By the way, this announcement about convenience packs is not related to the new Warp _5_ client. It is in addition to. The best info we have from IBM is that Warp _5_ is still being worked on, but as typical, they are very tight lipped about everything until release date is closer.
OS/2 co-exists nicely with all OS, it's got a bunch of free development tools (GNU!) and a decent install won't even take more than 200MB of your drive space.
If OS/2 is dead, you better let these people know:
http://www.warptech.org/WTSessions.html
because these technical sessions (complete with speakers from IBM itself) are overbooked.
Anybody remember the nuns in the TV ads?
The Czech nuns with the beeper?
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"Go Metallica. Die RIAA." -- Linus Torvalds
I think it's DIVE - Direct Interface to Video Extensions.
Well, there was one bank a while ago that used NT - the "Out of Memory" box (familiar to low-spec NT users who make tiny pagefiles) was showing on the ATM screen... There was another that used 9x, because it's familiar blue screen was showing on another, too.
That isn't true. I have the IBM OS/2 Programmer's Library on CD and paper. It has all the API documentation that you could want. Just because IBM didn't give it away for free doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
I stand corrected. If I paid for a copy of VisualAge for C++, I could have the API reference.
This was just a boneheaded move on IBM's part. If you want your operating system to succeed, you need to SATURATE the world with documentation. Seriously. Include it in on one of those BonusPak CDs. Print it on toilet paper. I don't care. JUST GIVE IT OVER FOR FREE. What moron at IBM thought that making it difficult to write apps for their OS was a good idea?
And hey, you can't just psychically determine what an API does. For example, what does DosEnterCriticalSection() do? How am I supposed to know that it does NOT operate like win32's EnterCriticalSection (which operates more like OS/2's DosRequestMutexSemaphore())?
The headers that came with EMX are not documentation enough. There was a grassroots project out there somewhere to produce a free API reference...and it fell on its face. I wrote up the Prf* APIs...but I can't tell you what all ten million OS/2 APIs do...let alone all their side effects.
...but maybe I could have if I had real docs...
I don't mean to sound whiny, or like I want something for free. But it just makes sense to make REAL good friends with your application developers right from the start. But I've already stated what I think about how many applications actually got developed for OS/2.
--ryan.
Don't say, "don't quote me," because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying.
Oh, sure, there WERE word processors and other office applications, but they all kinda sucked. IBMWorks? Blows. Used it for quite awhile, though, so I was kinda glad when the VMware beta would boot OS/2, so I could convert all those old documents to Rich Text Format. :)
...that's not to say that something has to be MS Word to be good. Let me be clear about that.
Also, does anyone remember the big hoopla about an OS/2 port of DOOM? This was ages before iD open-sourced it. The beta of the program always segfaulted on the title screen, and IBM learned the hard way that OS/2 desperately needed direct video and sound access if OS/2 was going to at least be ELIGIBLE to be a gaming platform.
You can't be a viable desktop OS unless you can play games under it. I (*ahem*) tend to be a believer in this. This fact is partially why Win95 came in and mopped the floor with Warp, when by all respects it should NOT have. Warp had YEARS to prove that "Crash Protection" and Multithreading and 32-bit architectures and long filenames, etc were a good reason to switch from Win3.1...Win95 offered all these things (more or less, depending on your opinion)...but not until much MUCH later. And while I can't really blame it all on game support, I know -I- was impressed by win95 games, like the at-the-time-new Pitfall title, in a way I never was with Warp.
DIVE, and GRADD, and DART were some of the results of the OS/2 multimedia/game effort. Funny how we take things like fbcon and DGA for granted under Linux, huh?
Never got my DOOM fix under OS/2, though. And one day, it crashed and took my filesystem with it for the last time, and I never went back. I was then dual-booting Linux and Win95. And it's sad, because I should, by all rights, be telling this story the other way around, with OS/2 overcoming Microsoft's offerings.
--ryan.
Don't say, "don't quote me," because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying.
>Perhaps if OS/2's WPS were ported to linux
This is just the GUI right?
I'm quite sure that someone has emulated the OS/2 GUI to Enlightenment. Take a look at www.themes.org (I hope I got that right.)
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Try http://www.dds.dk/ - it is the official homepage of the Danish Guide and Scout association. Only one page in English, though.
We monitor the stability, and our OS/2 box beats or matches several web hotels (NT, Linux, some other *nix'es), we monitor for comparison.
Still, we do think that our next OS will be Linux.
Yours in scouting,
Niels Kristian Jensen
-- From Denmark
I was a long-time OS/2 adherent, suffering along with everyone else while Microsoft ran rampant and OS/2 withered, until about Fixpak 9. It made my system so incredibly unstable that I pointed my browser at www.redhat.com and haven't looked back since. (And Warp 4 was pretty bloated.)
Yes, there were a few pangs of guilt about abandoning OS/2, and yes, I still have an OS/2 partition on my box (I need it to run Quicken, but I'm glad I made the switch.
Just face it: OS/2 is declining, Linux is exploding. With OS/2, you're at IBM's total mercy because it's closed-source. You can only wait for IBM to dole out updates when it pleases them. How can you stand it?
- Have a picture
Except that they're not charging for bug fixes (those are the "fix packs", which are free), they are charging for new features. Which microsoft does, I might add.
Netscape for OS/2 is the most stable version of Netscape that I've used, although that doesn't say too much. The port, AFAIK, was done mostly by IBM, and they seem to have some good programmers, even if they have the stupidest management in the known universe. (They bought MS-DOS, and 8-bit CP/M clone for their 16-bit PC when they had already written a 16-bit version of CP/M for it in-house.)
Netscape seems to be a lot more stable on Warp 4, but it still does crash. Rendering is still slow on really huge tables.
Haven't tried a recent build of Mozilla on it, so I don't know how well that runs.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
... what isn't OS/2 is OpenVMS.
No NT here. The only way I could ever see putting it in is to run Citrix Metaframe, and the cost is so ridiculously prohibitive, I would be better off running IBM Desktop On-call (runs in a browser) and letting users control a whole PC! Get a bunch of old 486s for free, boot them off of the Warp server with RIPL (no hard disk!) and you're set.
Right now I serve java applets from a P90 to allow visitors VT320 emulation to our games. That way they don't need to download a terminal emulator. Anyone who's used Windows' telnet knows it is worthless. can't even do basic VT graphics.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
He wrote:
"My point is, that the last thing we need from IBM is yet another distro. What possible benefit does this OS2 "warp" have over other distributions ?"
And:
"I think Linus should try and crack down on all these new distros, its getting too hard to keep up with."
What's the matter with your reading comprehension, your mom also into nose candy? BTW, along with OS/2 and Amiga zealots, you forgot Linux Nazis.
The best defense is a good offense :^) Anyway, the masthead says "News for Nerds" nothing about Linux....there were nerds running OS/2 before there was Linux or Slashdot.
Warp absolutely kicks ass. It's stable and fast. I can browse with Netscape and write/send email without a keyboard....all using voice commands on a Pentium 133 with 32Mb of ram. Try that on ANY other operating system.
Why should IBM have anything to do with DR. DOS? That's Caldera......IBM puts out PC-DOS and yes, it's still supported and they still put out upgrades. In fact you can buy PC-DOS 2000 for under $70US.
http://www-4.ibm.com/software/os/dos/
We used OS/2 2 in the early 90's and it would blow up about once a year. They convinced us to move to Windows 3.1 and it blew up twice a day. What a great OS. I loved it. But it wouldn't load on the old home box so.......
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Thanks for the tip...Maybe I won't be using it after all. I still think that it's kinda neat to have it in the original packaging...(I took the shrinkwrap off myself)...E-bay here I come (some people buy anything! )!
About 2 years ago, a buddy of mine bought Warp 4! He wanted to dual boot it with Win '98. Unfortunately we couldn't even get it on the machine by itself. Would this have anything to do with it apparrent 'lack' of hardware support that people go on about? I think I'll find out if he still has it, so we can give it another shot.
Once again, thanks for the tip.
-binner
Say what you mean, mean what you say! But please know what #$@% you are talking about!
I just picked up OS/2 1.3 in the original packaging a while back...I'm hoping to try it on a 486 I have kicking around. I've been wanting to try (at least see what's it all about) OS/2 for some time...this was the only version that I could find, as I'm not going to buy it!
-binner
Say what you mean, mean what you say! But please know what #$@% you are talking about!
Console games are a different bag, with a different (in my opinion, markedly inferior) interface. If you want to play PC-style games (and lots of us do), you need Windoze.
;-) I mean, sure, it runs my compilers faster, but do I care? On a home machine?
And hey, why would I bother to spend $4000 on a machine if not for games?
I haven't seem OS/2 in a really long time, when I last saw it, it seemed comparable to mabey win95 without any service packs. What has changed in that time? Has it kept up with the advances (usb, directX 7, etc.)?
Also, that Project Odin stuff looks real interesting. That would almost make OS/2 an easy to use replacement for current win9x users to get away from b. gates.
-Mike Bell
Definitely. OS/2 comes with IBM's Boot Manager which allows you to select a variety of OSs to boot at startup; it also works perfectly with lots of other boot managers. (My personal favourite is the GPLd XOSL - it has a proper point'n'click GUI etc. and does not require a separate partition - see www.xosl.org.) But that's not the only way it can do this things. OS/2 supports two different file systems - FAT and it's own excellent HPFS (one of the best things going for it over Windows etc. when it was first released was support for long file names - not to mention multitasking, the still superb GUI etc.) If you already have DOS/Win3.x/Win9x already installed on a FAT partition, you can install Warp 4 over the top - it will carefully not overwrite the existing operating systems, and then, from within OS/2, you can just type boot /dos and it will - boot /os2 to come back. Finally, the cleverest bit: it has a feature nicknamed 'Trapdoor'. This means that the system can save its state to disk and boot the other OS on the partition, then when that shuts down resume exactly where you were. You can even create an icon that just boots Windows to run a single app - you never have to see the stupid Start menu etc. OS/2 Warp 4 is really an excellent operating system; I use it and the new Warp Server for e-business extensively, and despite anything anyone says they ARE well-supported. Fixpacks every few months - new drivers from IBM all the time (it now has DVD support, full USB support for all printers, mice etc.) HTH.
Yeah, I saw that. Although I thought there was talk of a reprive - community improving gcc port so that it could compile it properly or something? I've never tried Solaris so I can't comment - but there's also this StarPortal thing, which ought to work fine with OS/2 as well.
Obviously, it wasn't. The best OS/2 news site is WarpCast. Several OS/2-related news items are posted daily. Check it out for a couple days, and you'll get an idea of what's been going on recently.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
No, the WPS is more than just a GUI. It's like Englightenment 3.0 + GNOME 5.0 combined, but 10 years later. It's difficult to explain in just a few words what it can do, but believe me, the WPS is way more than just the way the windows look. Underneath the visual layer, it's pretty much what GNOME is trying to be.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
On a side note, IBM's developers have long since used Star Trek terms as internal code names for various OS/2 products. The reason they called 3.0 Warp was because it was supposed to be a "performance release". The original goal was to make it look just like 2.1, but run faster and in 4MB of RAM. Of course, the programmers decided that making it smaller and faster was not enough, they had to add features and improve the GUI.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Probably the same one who made the Microchannel architecture that tremendous success.
SCNR
Does OS2 support DirectX?
--
--
While Linux is my primary OS, I still keep an OS/2 v4 partition on one of my machines for playing my large collection of older DOS games. Remember when you had to worry about 'low memory' (that was in the first 640K), and things like EMS and XMS to get a game running? OS/2's DOS box is excellent at that sort of thing, FAR better even than Win95. As an example, I couldn't even get Quest for Glory 4 to install in Windows, but it installs and runs perfectly in Warp.
I had no trouble learning about the OS/2 API; there were plenty
of books available. I also recall using EMX/GCC to write a
game demo. using the DIVE (video) and DART (audio) API's,
without having to buy anything. There was plenty of free stuff
available for developing on OS/2, even if it wasn't official IBM.
But I do agree that OS/2 has had its day. While I'm not rabid
about open-source, I do see OS/2 vs Linux as a good case
study in why OSS is a good thing.
Sometimes it's amazing how convenient convenience packs *aren't*.
Got Rhinos?
You do nearly every day, if you use a cash station, or deal with your bank. IBM did a whole bunch of financial applications that ran on OS/2 ONLY. The bank I used to do support with had a whole OS/2 infrastructure, just like most other banks at the time. It was the only OS that would run their proprietary client software, which was very slick for the time. On the occaision that I have had to reboot ATMs, they all run OS/2 id they do any graphics at all, due to the fact that it was *tada* stable as hell... I miss the days of Novell 3.x and Os/2 3.x Now, all I get to do is NT, NT, NT, and it's got the uptime of an old lady falling down stairs.
OS/2 is still very popular in banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions. Not to mention other places where stability, high availability, ease-of-use and industrial, 7/24 vendor support are crucial.
OS/2 is everywhere. You just can't alway see it.
For a first-time computer user, the OS/2 UI is vastly superior. And for everybody, once you truly understand how it works, and everything you can do with it, you just can't do without it again.
Some of its key points:
Want to open that HTML file in Netscape, or in a text editor? Drag it onto the Netscape program object, the editor program object, or, if you've got the associations set up already, just right-click and choose the associated program you want to open it with.
Local LAN printer is stalled, and your print job is waiting in the queue? Just open the printer object, and drag your print job onto another printer.
This consistency extends to the programmer's point of view as well. Want to enhance the way desktop folders work? Simply subclass the WP_Folder object class, and add whatever you want. Then register your new class with the desktop, and your new class is all ready. You can even do an across-the-board replacement of the old folder class with little more effort.
In an object-oriented interface, like OS/2's, you start with the files (the objects), and choose the task to perform on them.
For example: to compile a program in Windows, I might open Explorer (task=locate file). I double-click on the file to bring it up in a text editor (only one file association possible, alas). When I'm ready to compile, I save the file, open my compiler (task=compile), choose the file, and compile it.
In OS/2, I open the folder where source files are kept. I right-click on the program, and choose "Editor". I edit the file. When I'm ready to compile, I right-click on the program, and choose "GCC compile" (or whatever). To debug, I right-click on the file and choose "GDB debug". Simple, consistent, and infinitely extensible. (I can associate as many programs or tasks with any given object, file type, or object class as I want.)
As another example, program object "Program1" is pointing to "C:\Apps\PROG1.EXE". Let's say I decide to move PROG1.EXE to "E:\Utils\PROG1.EXE". Lo and behond, the program object "Program1" automatically updates itself to point to the new file location. No need to edit the properties. (Ah, the wonder of Extended Attributes!)
(As another minor example, I also think some of the mouse bindings are more intelligently thought out. Left button is Select, right is Manipulate. So, you left-click to highlight, left-drag to mark, left-double-click to open; you right-click to bring up the context menu, and right-drag to move.)
Well, I could go on... but I think I've gone on long enough. Suffice it to say, I've yet to see a desktop UI that's as enjoyable to use as the OS/2 WorkPlace Shell. That's one of the only things keeping from using Linux full-time. I just can't do without it.
All that's really new about this "Convenience Pack" offering is that they're going to update the distribution CDs (i.e., roll the latest FixPaks into the installable package), and make them available free to Software Choice subscribers (an action which is long overdue).
The major shortcoming is in multimedia -- i.e., recent sound card drivers, codecs, plugins (you think RealPlayer is bad news on Linux? Hah.)... There are open-source efforts addressing most of these, but they move slowly. (More slowly than on Linux, alas.)
In any case, OS/2 is perfectly useable as a home system for most purposes. And it looks like it will remain that way for at least a few more years.
Remember, it is standard operating procedure at IBM not to pre-announce any new product more than three months prior to its release date. (For decades, in fact, they were under court order to behave this way, and the habit dies hard.)
So, just to make this clear: this does not rule out a new version of OS/2 in the near future.
It might not happen. But then again, it might.
Gah. Slip of the mouse (and/or momentary lapse of intelligence). My mistake, my apologies.
Today's Warpers may wonder what may have been if IBM opensourced OS/2. The question that comes to mind after reading this topic is, can OS/2 be revived from stasis with opensourcing or is it too late?
It is interesting to see how Apple has sought to improve it's operating system, ie. Apple OS X by incoporating a BSD kernel. Can the same be done to OS/2? The corporations that I've seen to be still using OS/2 as their primary platform are the financial and banking sectors. Perhaps they shall be impressed once unix-type support in included in OS/2. I'd have to say that I would to.
But alas, this may just be another dream gone by...
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
... more reliable and stable, than any of M$ platforms...
this field has been intentionally left blank
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
I've done some support work for IBM, and most banks around here still use OS/2 as their primary platform. The security is centralized, and if properly implemented, unbreakable.
As well, most ABM's or ATM's (Instant cash machines) use OS/2. Doesn't matter Diebold, NCR or otherwise. Imagine walking up to an ATM and seeing "General Protection Fault:" :-)
But the desktop was the best! You could create a desktop "palette" of colours, fonts etc and just drag and drop that on your desktop and *poof*(tm) it would change. You could even do that with just a single window, and it would modify just the objects in that window! Try modifying the background bitmap, font or colour of ONE window, in any O/S out there!
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
Not only that, but the object model that the desktop uses means that when you rename a file that a program object (or shadow) points to, the objects that refer to the file get updated automatically -- even if you do the rename from a command line. It's that sort of thing -- it was just designed correctly to begin with. Oh, and I still use OS/2 at home. Last thing I want to deal with is more Unix or Windows when I'm not at work.
No, Windows 98 has not resolved this problem.
:)
It's not a bug in the sense that it's a small problem out of which they need to work out the kinks. The reason Windows 95/98 brings the system down to an unusable pace is that it uses co-operative multitasking, and not true preemptive multitasking.
MS and Windows 9x proponents usually spout off that Windows 9x has true preemtive multitasking, but the classic test for preemtive multitasking is to watch the performance of the machine while formatting a floppy, or copying a lot of files to one. If the system slows down to a grind, then the OS is using primitive, co-operative multitasking, and if the system performs more or less like usual, then it has preemtive multitasking.
Contrary to propaganda and popular belief, Windows 9x does not. I don't know about NT -- it's supposed to, but I've never performed the classic test.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
So let me get this straight. Microsoft wrote OS/2. Microsoft wrote Windows. IBM sued Microsoft but because Windows and OS/2 are seperate products, IBM lost.
Excuse me - if Microsoft wrote them both, it wouldn't matter if they were similar or not - you ARE allowed to infinge your OWN copyright!
Actually Microsoft and IBM collaborated on OS/2. Microsoft decided to write OS/2-lite and called it Windows. OS/2 didn't get the market share for several reasons - it was perceived as being for IBM's PS/2 range only (it wasn't) - it had (for the time) high memory requirements - it was targetted at the 286 and was outdated when the 386 was released. OS/2 since release 2.0 has been a decent stable OS that is still used by banks throughout the world. It had an object-orientated GUI before Windows9x. It has far lower hardware and memory requirements than NT (try a 486/66 with 32mb of RAM running 8 business applications simultaneously on NT).
If you see a copy of Warp on discount at your local store, buy it - even if it's just to see an alternative view of what NT might have been.
hmm is there any point to this post? no but i think OS/2 is my favourite OS of all. Its GUI is simply the best and it just had such a coolness about it. I had enough apps to do stuff at the time such as ami pro, some orrid IBM spreadsheet and stuff. WebExplorer was quite a good browser, of course there is Netscape now. its a pity its so down now, due to IBM and the infernal politics i guess. they do get a lot of revenue from it every year still anyway. maybe it'll make a comeback! woohoo!
other than being WIMP i can't see much similarity between WPS and X
How much coverage do you want? There hasn't been much doing in the OS/2 Community form what I've seen. I used to be an avid OS/2 user when I ran a 3 node bbs, but I gave it up and went linux/bsd. I pop my head in #os/2 on EFnet and some other networks and rarely do I see any talk of new features or applications. (Yes there are people still developing applications, but not as many as there should). I don't think /. is biased against OS/2 at all. I just think there's a lack of happenings IMO.
------- What exactly is real?
Hmm... Well, I never used OS/2 - but for a firewall, RH 5.2 on a 250 MB 486 (8 or so ram) and a couple of cheezo ISA NICs does the job rather well... (forget cheap, how 'bout FREE!?)
I have a 486/25 I use as a modem server - it does rather well, now having about 6 months of 24x7 uptime... and showing no sign of letting up. I sold the monitor a while back since I didn't need it.
OS/2 might be cool, but Linux just takes the cake. (I once wrote a relational database in BASH, the command shell, for god's sakes!)
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Then everyone would be talking about how the evil IBM monopoly had bullied the small, innovative Microsoft into abandoning their intuitive, consumer friendly Windows Operating System.
Not that I have ever seen OS\2 or know anything about it, and not that I :::shudders::: like Windows or M$, but the point is, hindsight is 20\20, or maybe the point is you can never win.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
DIVE seems to be an API for standardised access to Video Drivers. DirectX is a collection of APIs for standardised lowish level access to various pieces of hardware.
DirectX includes
DirectDraw - 2D graphics
DirectInput - Keyboard, Mouse, Joystick, etc.
DirectPlay - Networking
Direct3D - 3D graphics
DirectSound and DirectMusic - Guess
DIVE is I suspect equivalent only to DirectDraw. Other important/difficult pieces from a programmer's point of view are the sound, and input.
Sam Lantinga, Lead Programmer for Loki Entertainment Software has created Simple DirectMedia Layer which is an open source project to develop DirectX style functionality. This is currently available for Linux, Win32, and BeOS, with unofficial/in progress ports to Solaris, IRIX, OpenBSD, and MacOS. So it might be possible to get this extended to OS/2 WARP as well.
Gamma Testing - Where testing is extended to the full user community (AKA Shipping the Program)
Netcraft reports the site as running Compaq Tru64 UNIX though this could be because of a firewall or some such. It does report the web server as Domino-Go-Webserver/4.6.2.5 which is a good IBM/Lotus program.
Gamma Testing - Where testing is extended to the full user community (AKA Shipping the Program)
The Olympics this year are the Summer games which are being held in Sydney Australia. IBM are however also the official provider of internet solutions to them. The next Winter games are in SaltLake City Utah USA but not until 2002.
Gamma Testing - Where testing is extended to the full user community (AKA Shipping the Program)
The Pres (Lou Gerstner) has said many things about OS/2. IBM as a whole seems to be generally confused as to what to do with it. I think they all just want it to go away.
"You end up talking to yourself a lot, which gets terribly boring because half the time you know what you're going to sa
Um...just because the majority of topics are linux related, I still see MANY non linux topics. You should really lay off the pipe.
"You end up talking to yourself a lot, which gets terribly boring because half the time you know what you're going to sa
What we really need to do is create an open source OS/2/Linux deal, running on Amiga, that way we've got the ultimate in Hard core. You wouldn't be able to get those freaks away from their computers.
"You end up talking to yourself a lot, which gets terribly boring because half the time you know what you're going to sa
If it's possible and safe, I just might be interested in giving Big Blue another chance...
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JavaScript tutorials scripts
At least they're trying to support their previous customers, but they might as well release an upgrade to Dr. Dos:(
- Jeremy Fuller
The three places that I have worked on it recently are a voicemail system and an Intermec barcode terminal controller at my last employer and a radio automation system at my current employer. In all cases it is used because it is rock-stable. On the voicemail system - it just ran. When I left the company it had been up for about a year with no reboots. On the barcode controller the Intermec software, not OS/2, required the only reboots that were done. The computer that runs the automation system controls two satellite receivers and four DAT decks. It runs 24/7 putting some satellite content directly on air, some on tape, pulling some programs from tape to air and inserting promos and station Ids that are recorded on it's hard drive.
I have great faith in fools - self confidence my friends call it. - Edgar Allan Poe
Article here:
7 407,2535405,00.html?chkpt=p1bn
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/newsbursts/0,
OS/2 doesn't have a hardware-support issue. Feast your eyes on http://service.software.ibm.com/os2ddpak/html/inde x.htm :)
Check out http://www.os2.org and http://www.netlabs.org for open-source movement for OS/2. 90% of Linux-based tools (sed, grep, gcc, etc) have been ported to OS/2 and thanks to EMX, porting ANY linux app to OS/2 is very easy.
Not true.. When you get into the mainstream OS/2 community (tip: look around IRC) you'll find that it is quite easy to drop a note to the right person and find a fix ready for you within a month or two. PS: Fixpacks are released AT MOST once per 3 months.. Updates are easy to come by and add functionality aside from fixing bugs.
What with all new Apple Boxen lacking a floppy drive, there's going to be a big hole in Apple's Quality Assurance Testing.
Sure, their developers think they're writing code that implements and uses pre-emptive multitasking, but without the ability to conduct the Classic Test, they'll never be able to tell!
Steve Jobs is gonna be pretty pissed when this gets out.
my blog: good times, man, good times
Running Xfree86/OS2 has an additional benefit if you have Linux systems on your network. It provides you with the ability to run software on your Linux box with the display occuring on your OS/2 box! I've set up a web page documenting how to do it(there's minor differences in setting up the OS/2 and the Linux systems). I've succesfully run Civilization CTP on my OS/2 system using this.
They often release more than one fixpack a year
That is, if you have OS/2 in English, other languages have to pray some big customer will request a fix.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
At that time, Microsoft was charging real money ($300?) for the Windows SDK. A friend of mine paid over $2000 for the Microsoft OS/2 2.X SDK. That was shortly before Microsoft bailed on OS/2 and announced NT. He didn't get a refund from Microsoft even though Microsoft had broken their promises to the purchasers of the SDK.
I remember hearing people say that an expensive SDK was actually a good thing for an operating system, as it kept out the unwashed masses of amateurs and shareware programmers.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
IBM OS/2 1.3 also runs on ISA machines, although it is only guaranteed to run on IBM ISA machines. I used to run it on a no-name 386 clone.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
IBM wasted all that money on Super Bowl ads about e-Business instead of showing us OS/2's superiority in formatting floppy disks. They coulda turned the whole thing around overnight.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I use OS/2 almost exclusive at work. (I have an NT partition also, but the the only time I ever use it is so that I can run PCAnywhere to dial into clients' computers and look at their problems. If I had a PCAnywhere-compatable program for OS/2, then NT would become obsolete for me. Too bad it uses a proprietary protocol. It wasn't my decision to have clients use it.)
The reason that I use OS/2 is going to make you laugh, probably.
I'm a DOS developer. That is, I maintain a number of business apps that use the DOS API rather than Win16/Win32. I don't see these apps going away anytime soon, since they actually happen to work quite well, and porting them to another API would be uneconomical.
Anyway, I really have almost no need for Windoze compatability. My compiler runs under DOS, my apps run under DOS, my text editor runs under DOS, etc. This has an amazing consequence: I am actually free to use whatever OS works best, with the only real restriction being that it needs good DOS support!
Except for my PCAnywhere issue, I don't need Windows. And if you don't need Windows, then there is no reason to use it. The only reason Windows is still around, is that a lot of people are locked into it by dependence on some particular application that is only available for Windows. That's why Microsoft is so terrified of middleware. (That's also why I have an NT partition. Fortunately, I only need it once every few months.)
Under circumstances like that, who wouldn't use OS/2? It's the best tool for the job, and unlike 99% of the world, I actually get to use whatever happens to work best.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Netware has infinite uptimes. The only time you ever have to work on it, is when the fans become clogged with dust.
Combine that with the fact that there are IT people, and you have a problem. What are they supposed to do all day? The last thing the IT profession wants are long uptimes. That leads to layoffs.
What what I have seen in smaller businesses (not Fortune 500) here's the overall pattern of how the evolution worked: first, you have a reliable network. A Netware file server and about 100 users. There isn't anyone whose full-time job is to take care of the computers. Everyone is happy and their computers work.
Next, someone "upgrades" to Windows, perhaps on a whim. Nothing wrong with trying new things. It looks pretty, so a few more people try it, or perhaps one of them needs to read an Excel spreadsheet that some asshole sent them. Now one of the employees -- not really an IT professional -- has most of his or her job gravitate over to keeping the computers running.
Eventually, it becomes too big a job for this part-timer who really has other responsibilities, so the company places an ad for a new position: IT. Guess who the applicants are? Fullblown Microsoft-indoctrinated MSCEs. One gets hired.
Now you are in deep shit. This guy's credentials are impeccible, he knows all the coolest buzzwords, and he must be a genious, because he does a better job of keeping your Windows workstations running, than the part-timer that preceeded him. The company is going to listen to him.
Within 12 months, that IT person needs an assistant, as things get even more "upgraded" most brilliant product to date: Win98. Win98 has created more jobs than Henry Ford! Thank God for Win98!
The Netware server is kind of a sore spot, though, so both the IT dudes decide to replace it with 2 or 3 NT servers. Another 12 months go by, and now you have four IT people working for you.
That's progress.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I wanted to try OS/2 but never had the guts to shell out
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Troll.
Linux users->run NT (or even better, BeOS!)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
"the original development of Windows was a joint collaboration before 'differences' made IBM pull out and start there own project (OS/2). "
Actually, IBM and MS were working on OS/2 and MS left after their falling out, taking their part of the code base with them to develop Windows. They basically used IBM, waited around until they had enough to go to market with, and split. If you read the forward in the manual (or maybe it was the box) of Windows v.1.0, it will say something to effect of "prepares you for the awesome power of OS/2!"
From what I remember (I've read several articles on the saga), OS/2 was just taking too damn long for MS. The extra time put in is evident: low overhead, clean, quick...if only people would support it. IBM, open-source it...please...
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
>>Who still uses OS/2?
;-)
>The villian in Goldeneye
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that. Warp 3, at that... but talk about stable, the whole place gets hit with EMP and it's still sitting there on it's little splash screen.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
> Would love to see the OS/2 Workplace Shell (WPS) being released under the GPL
Is there an enlightenment work-alike theme or other mock-up of this somewhere ? I've never used anything beyond OS/2 2.1, and even then I was at too early a stage to understand what made it different... I'd like to see what they did with their GUI that made is unique.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
I do - both server and client - extensively. Why? Because for most things its far better/nicer than most other things. The GUI is the best I've ever seen - Gnome/KDE/Windows all seem very shallow in comparison. It is VERY stable & reliable & fast. It is still supported - new fixpacks and drivers just keep coming out - we now have full DVD & USB printer, keyboard, mouse support etc. There are plenty of software products - Lotus Smartsuite, Star Office, Netscape etc., and nearly all command-line UNIX software can now be compiled for it using EMX meaning we have Apache etc. Odin is making great progress; recent tests showed it to be the fastest Java platform available and the TCP/IP stack is excellent. Yes, I recognise that Linux beats it at some things, but I still use OS/2 for a lot of tasks. As a web server serving a large servlet-based website, for example. As a general-purpose client.
HTH.
Which reminds me, I'd like to thank Slashdot for posting this article.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
It's freakin' unbelievable how poorly written ZDNet articles tend to be. It's not like the writers work for the NY Times, where everyone needs to crank out major articles on a daily basis.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
That's not true. Only people inside the OS/2 circles know everything that's going on, and Slashdot is a good forum for telling non OS/2 users about the major happenings in OS/2 land. I figured that when Project Odin first got Direct X support, that was a huge deal. Or when Win32-OS/2 was able to run Quake II on OS/2, with full hardware 3D (despite the fact that OS/2 itself doesn't support hardware 3D). Even John Carmack himself was impressed with that. But these stories were never announced on Slashdot.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
To me, it says that it was coincidence that your specific combination of hardware was better supported under Linux than under OS/2. That's why we hear all sorts of stories about some person who couldn't install oeprating system X on his machine, when operating system Y worked without a problem. And then a bunch of people reply with their own stores, but they had success with X and not Y.
I could easily stand on top of a hill and proclaim how easy OS/2 is to install for me, but how much of a pain Linux is. But I won't, becase it would be unfair. Not only do I know OS/2 about 100 times better than I know Linux, but I hand picked my hardware to be OS/2 compatible rather than Linux compatible.
but I'm not gonna hold my breath until I turn blue...so to speak.
Very witty :-)
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Most of the customers who are left are big banks. One thing OS/2 excels at beyond any other OS I've seen is talking to Big Blue Steel. If you've got an IBM Mainframe OS/2 is almost a given, even if IBM PCCO never did like the OS very much.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Microsoft was handing out Windows developers kits left and right. You were lucky if you could find someone in IBM who you could persuade, after much arm twisting, to sell you a dev kit for a few hundred dollars. Of COURSE there were no apps for OS/2.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Ok, genuine question: Who still uses OS/2? Why?
====
I seriously don't get you folks. You determine what kind of operating software to install on a $3000 piece of equipment solely on the availability of games? Get an N64 or something, more cost effective and more stable.
PiThe "look" of the Workplace Shell (WPS) is not really anything spectacular, IMHO, so I'm not sure whether a theme would really be informative. The great thing about the WPS is all the things that you can do with folders and other desktop objects -- and they are objects. Want to print something? Drag the file icon onto the printer icon. Need a handy copy of a program on your desktop? Make a shadow -- like a shortcut, except that if the original gets relocated, the shadow still works. Need a file to be associated with a specific application? Don't worry about filename extensions, just go ahead and set the properties. It's a very useful GUI and not very difficult to learn. A while ago, you could even get a "Workplace Shell for Windows" from the IBM Employee Written Software site; not sure if that's still around.
At the OS level, I used to have to run several DOS sessions at once, each with their own environments. OS/2 never blinked. And if one of them broke, it could be mercilessly destroyed while the rest of the system kept on going . . . but I digress.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
no apps? are u really sure or did u never look? i recall several word processors, spreadsheets, databases, image programs and tons of the usual shareware stuff. if u don't believe me... well tough and i got a lot of that stuff on CD still anyway =P
OS/2 had applications, you just had to turn a few stones to find them. But it had a "nutritionally complete" set of applications, if you looked.
But to most people, a word processor isn't a Word Processor unless it's MS Word, and a spreadsheet isn't a Spreadsheet unless it's MS Excel. MS once said that they would produce Office for OS/2 once it had 2,000,000 sales/users. At it's peak, OS/2 was between 10 and 15 million users, but MS never produced Office/2.
Comparing OS/2 to Linux for a moment on this front, both past and future is interesting.
While OS/2 had commercial apps, they were hard to find until you'd become an insider. Linux apps are the same, except that the Web has become better developed to help people become insiders.
On the applications front, MS apps were considerably more trim in the OS/2 days, and were thus more formidable. They've put on a lot of fat since then, so I suspect people are more willing to consider non-MS alternatives.
One way OS/2 has contributed to the current situation is to become, "legendary," one of those "superior" things mowed over by the MS marketing machine.
That's true, IMHO.
It has helped set the stage for MS' current woes. It helps highlight how their "innovation" isn't technical, it's in business practices.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
One of the reasons that I like IBM is that they support customers running old and "obsolete" hardware and software. Unlike Microsoft and many other companies, that tell you to get fscked if you aren't running the latest version of the product or if the product has been discontinued.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
That isn't true. I have the IBM OS/2 Programmer's Library on CD and paper. It has all the API documentation that you could want. Just because IBM didn't give it away for free doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
...do people get so nostalgic about OS/2?!
:) ). Hobbes, the main OS/2 archive, used to have OS/2 programs. Now it has ports of Linux programs. Save your energy and run Linux instead.
I ran the thing for over 4 years. Gave up on it after Warp 4...I just couldn't get the hardware support I needed. (I switched to Linux. Linux in 1996 had better driver support than OS/2. What does THAT tell you?)
Furthermore, I got sick of it crashing. It actually did that a LOT. Seriously. My experience with OS/2, after years of using it and developing for it, on beefy boxes as well as constrained systems, was that it NOT more efficient than Win95: It crashed as much (and more than once took the filesystem with it), and didn't run faster or in less space.
Actually, Warp 3 and OS/2 2.1 were probably better than Win95 as far as resources go, but ghod, Warp 4 was BLOATED.
And I really don't see the attraction to the Workplace Shell. It's okay. It's a different paradigm. I can respect that. Generally speaking, I consider X to be just an excuse to open a whole bunch of Xterms, so I'm really not into the cool GUI features so much...but if the "object oriented" metaphor of the WPS was worth anything, it was most undeniably never taken advantage of.
Actually, it wasn't the drivers that drove me from OS/2. It was the apps: there WEREN'T any.
And don't give me any shit about this one. There were NO apps. There was no StarOffice, for what good that thing is. There was two browsers: WebExplorer, which was crap, and Netscape 2.02, which was more than a YEAR out of date when it made its way to OS/2.
The only saving grace of OS/2 was EMX: the GCC port to OS/2. Of course, IBM wouldn't release any API specs for the operating system, so you basically limited to porting Unix apps.
Which brings up a good point: I don't understand the need to port everything from Linux to OS/2. Why are people porting Enlightenment to OS/2?! (apparently the WPS isn't so magical for everyone.
Basically OS/2 was a good idea that was (and still is) mistreated by its creator, and is WAY past its usefulness. I see no reason to artificially extend its life. If you want Linux apps, run Linux. If you want Win32 apps, run Windows, but don't expend your talents on a dead OS when there is more potential for good elsewhere.
Ugh. I hate to write that, having spent years doing my share of OS/2 advocacy. There are still some chunks of OS/2 that could be useful to the Open Source world if IBM released the code, but I'm not gonna hold my breath until I turn blue...so to speak.
--ryan.
Don't say, "don't quote me," because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying.
Additionally, there's a windows programmer mentality in the OS. What does that mean? Well what that means is that programmers don't hesitate to use application or system modal dialog boxes. They also tend to assume that their app is the only one running on the system, and will grab focus and raise to the top at the most annoying times. They also tend not to utilize the OS/2 threading system to minimize the impact of the single system input queue. OS/2 and Windows systems tend to feel sluggish to me.
On the plus side, the entire environment is object oriented (And very similar to Gnome,) something which continues to elude Microsoft. The whole desktop is a tree of objects and once you learn how everything works, the interface tends to be very intuitive. It's also easy to modify. Want some extra buttons on your title bars? No problem -- just find the frame SOM object and subclass it systemwide.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Microsoft still holds many of the copyrights in the code for OS/2. Figuring out what they did versus what IBM did would be an insurmountable task. It'd be easier just to design an interface/API for Linux or some other open source OS which would bring over most of the best features.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Unfortunately, man¦woman does not live on bread alone. Lack of (or age of) application software did their thing to impose severe pressure on this operating system. IMHO, IBM should've given away a SDK for free, for everyone and not just some handpicked 'key developers'. Imagine what a bunch of enthusiasts together with gcc and a suitable GUI development kit could have done. sigh...
And, of course, their main competitor (don't recall the name, but I faintly remember something some quarrel before court) has its own way of making the competition's life pretty damn hard...
Would love to see the OS/2 Workplace Shell (WPS) being released under the GPL and OS/2 itself containing txtutils like sed, awk & co. Plus, of course, an up-to-date (not-only-limited-to internet-) app suite.
Use The Source, Luke!
Many airlines use OS/2, but ValueJet ran Windows, maybe that's why they crashed ;)
According to Bill Gates, "OS/2 is the operating system of the future".
I use Merlin, and have been using OS/2 as my primary desktop since 1992. I'd say it's more stable than Windows, but that's not really saying anything. Back in 1994, someone I worked with realized how stable OS/2 when he saw OS/2 crash during a database import. I was running a database import in a DOS box, and the desktop crashed and restarted itself. The import that was running, did not stop.
Fight Spammers!
I just can't get over the fact that I was doing things on a 12 mhz 286 with 3MB of RAM in 1990 that I still find difficult to do on Windows 98 today (like doing real work while formatting a floppy). I could download things at 2400 baud without any foreground slow down! Try that in Windows 3.0.
A sad passing for a truly fine operating system. If only Bill Gates had used his powers for good not evil and had backed OS/2 1.3 as the premier desktop/server OS it was and let Windows be merely a footnote next to Microsoft Bob.
Consistency.
It took the object appearance of a GUI, and carried it to a far deeper level. The desktop objects also had inheritance, and it showed throughout the UI.
For example, one time I was changing icons, waltzing through the silly dialogs, thinking that it was a pain in the neck. Then I thought, "WIBNI I could just drag that icon that I want and drop it over the current icon on the settings page?" I tried it, and it WORKED.
Many other things turned out to be that way. If you thought an object ought to behave in a certain fashion, give it a try. Most of the time, the desktop objects behaved in the absolutely intuitive fashion expected.
Discoverable
You could get along in a very simplistic fashion, but you could always find a deeper layer, and new things that the OO underpinnings could do for you.
More depth
Being CORBA based (SOM was an early CORBA) meant that classes could be replaced. There were add-ons that extended the WPS in many ways, Stardock's Object Desktop being the most noteworthy.
There's more, but not now.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The convenience pack release which will be rolled out this Fall will effectively be the improved base operating system, complete with any fixpacks that addressed bugs and added improvements. This is great because we get all the fixes and improvements to the base OS all on one CD. You won't have to install the base OS and then the various fixpacks for the base OS, TCP/IP, etc. This is great news.
Also, I don't recall reading anything that says that IBM will stop producing and releasing free fixpacks for OS/2. They often release more than one fixpack a year in order to try and address issues in a timely fashion. So you have a choice. Continue using the free fixpack route or go for the convenience pack to streamline installation.
You are eligible for the convenience packs if you are a subscriber to their related support system which runs about $200 for two years. This entitles you to other stuff beside the convenience pack by the way.
OS/2 has its place and has been on my system since ver 2.11. I do have a win98 system which I only use for games or building Access databases (yuck!). I also have SuSE 6.3 installed and running and love using Gimp under it. Perhaps if OS/2's WPS were ported to linux (or if someone wrote something from scratch as nice) I might be inlined to switch over to linux for my main computing needs. I do have a number of OS/2 apps that I would miss though and I hate trashing software simply because it isn't "new".
IBM continues to focus on the needs of their big clients who run OS/2. Individuals like me who use it aren't much of a concern for them. Still I get to benefit from the support that IBM is making available to companies who can spend more on computers in a single quarter than I'll likely make in a lifetime.
Jeff