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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 ..."
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
There are OS/2 USB drivers for many devices.
For more news/info check www.os2.org/en
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.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Yes, Project Odin implements Direct-X, at least a part of it. More work has to be done but we can already run 2D-Apps and 3D-Apps if they support GLIDE. For example I can run Quake II, Quake III and Halflive on my OS/2 box with my 3DfX card. Odin is *not* an emulation so performance loss is minimal.
RealPlayer and Office '97 is also working!!
By the way, the link to the Odin homepage is wrong, it should be like this.
--- @ OS/2 Netlabs OpenSource Software for OS/2 http:://www.netlabs.org
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)
Someone on /. complaining about consistancy? Strange. On Linux you have TK apps, you have GTK+ apps, you have Qt apps, you have Motif apps, you have Athena apps, bash apps, csh apps, ncurses apps, add nauseum. Not bad necessarily, but I don't think a Linux user (you imply you are because of the Gnome comment) is in any position to critisize ANY other OS about consistancy.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Troll.
Linux users->run NT (or even better, BeOS!)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Actually it is the same situation as with Linux and Windows and RAM. Flaky RAM tends to bring down Linux much easier than Windows. Also, overclocked CPUs tends to bring down BeOS faster than Windows or Linux.
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.
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.
You're telling me OS/2 is good enough to make netscape work?
I don't believe you.
What most people don't know about DIVE is that it was designed to do only one thing: play movies. There were no real attempts to extend it beyond that capability. DIVE doesn't let you bitblt to only a region of the window - you have to update the whole thing in one shot. When playing a movie, that's fine. When doing sprites, it's horrible.
Direct X started off the same way, but MS kept extending it with more and more features. When people say that Direct X is so much better than DIVE, they're generally correct, but it's a meaningless comparison. It's like saying that a car is faster than a bicycle. Just because a car is faster and more people drive a car than ride a bike, that doesn't mean that bikes are obsolete and should be ignored.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
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
I used to push the WPS concepts on the GNOME mailing lists. But as far as I could tell, GNOME just kept trying to look as much as possible like Windows.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
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