Slashdot Mirror
IBM Cranks OS/2 Curtain, Compaq Revives OpenVMS
Freshly Exhumed writes "This site has a couple of divergent OS sagas ... IBM is basically saying "Bring out your dead" to OS/2 fans. Compaq has listened to the faint cries of "I'm not dead yet" and announced a reprieve for OpenVMS." OS/2 has repeatedly refused to die before, though. One interesting snippet from the article on VMS: "The Wildfire version of the Alpha processor will allow users to run OpenVMS in the same box as Compaq's Tru64 Unix operating system, using hard partitioning techniques." IBM 390, upcoming Alphas ... when will mainstream chips do this? :)
Netlabs.Org s a great starting point for people interested in OS/2. Not only do they have Project Odin But they also have many other interesting developments. Project ODIN is the PE to LX converter that allows Windows 95/98/NT binaries to be converted or ran natively on OS/2. There is a new SB Live driver that has been ported from Linux that also created a new library and code to allow OpenSound modules to be used in OS/2. (FIlling in the sound card gap) and alas there is a small passthrough driver that makes WinOS2 think you have a SB 16 installed so that no matter what soundcard you have as your OS/2 driver you won't have to find those tricky "WinOS2" drivers.. just use this "passthrough" one.
On another note, Papyrus 8 was just released. It really is a nice tight/integrated "Office" suite that still fits on 3 floppy disks (yes it does hehe) and PMview 2000 is coming out with a new version.
The most interesting note is the integration of Warp Server E-Business codebase with that of OS2 Warp 4. This was done through Fixpack 13. If you upgrade to Fixpack 13 your not limited to the 528 megs addressable space anymore, you have the 32bit KEE extensions for 32 bit filesystem driverws (such as jfs) and there are many more updates and new addons available.
On top of that a great company called scitech has released video drivers for TNT, TNT2, Geforce, 3dfx (all versions) and Matrox (all versions) cards that make the graphics fly. OpenGL and MGL acclerated support are available as well. (i believe the url is http://www.scitechsoft.com for this company).
As well as having the fastest Java implementation around, one of the best Dos/Windows and OS2 environment easiest to port to platforms, i don't know why ibm would kill it. The device drivers are there, the end users wishing for a new version are there.. and why would they continue to add 32 bit BSD based ip stacks, SMP and server related systems to kill it a measly 12 months from now?
Interesting indeed, but as usuall looks like a laywer and a business need to review this "Future plan" for OS/2 and see what it really means. I can't see IBM telling a bank to redo everything in java when there is NO support for java other then stock tickers and web page games..
And boy howdy, how sweet of a development platform Visual Age C++ 4.0 for OS/2 is once they iron out the bugs.. use the Open API and your app will compile under NT as well.. woah, offer a choice who would have ever thought of that!
There are still quite a few die-hard OS/2 fans in IBM (Many of whom read this site.) I expect they'll probably be bitter about it, but many of them were starting to make the jump to Linux, if only because it lets them work however they want to, not however someone else wants them to.
I'm glad Linux at least is beyond IBM's control. They'd find some way to fuck it up, otherwise.
In many ways OS/2 is also a study of what not to do with an operating system. IBM tried to preserve backward compatability at all times, to the detriment of the design. It seems like the Linux crowd is avoiding the mistakes IBM made. And it's finally realizing the IBM dream of one OS that will run on all their hardware (Something they wanted to do with OS/2 but were never able to accomplish.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Sure, I like UNIX, but there are many advantages to VMS about which a UNIX only geek of today might never learn. VMS is a solid, highly secure OS -- to toss this technology away is plain folly.
I honestly think we'd be better off just devoting time and effort to fixing the (few) areas where the free Unixes are not as good as VMS then we would be trying to salvage anything useful from it.
I really, really don't like VMS. It may be a stable system, but I can't help but wonder if that isn't because it is even uglier then Unix is, and thus no one uses it. The Unix command line at least appeals to geeks after they get to know it, but even the VMS advocates I know agree that it is Very Messy Syntax.
"I've used Mach; Mach is one of the reasons I think micro-kernels are a bad idea. I've used VMS; VMS is one of the reasons I think VMS is a bad idea." -- Linus Torvalds
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
As a former OS/2 user, I come here to bury OS/2 not praise it. Praise is useful to the living, not the dead, and then only when deserved.
IBM's announcemnt a few weeks ago about a "transition" from OS/2 to other operating systems just made official what has been a fact for a few years. OS/2 hasn't been IBM's focus, a smarter multi-OS whatever the customer wants approach is what they've obviously used.
Oddly enough...after another look at the same announcement today shows that IBM has changed the text...making it sound even positive...as if OS/2 isn't really going away.
Don't believe a bit of the soft-padded inclusion of OS/2 -- there's no practical reason to use it.
The Register got it right when they talked about the original announcement.
As a former OS/2 user, I have to ask that others not waste time on Amiga-style wishes to revive any part of OS/2. The WPS was sweet, but unfortunately the GUI as a whole was unstable. Sure, it was better then what the other guys offered but that's faint praise.
Since then, the tools and operating systems have improved. Any OS that has fallen behind won't be able to keep up without borrowing from the leaders. I'm even doubtful that closed operating systems can keep ahead of open ones -- even Apple seems to have realized that.
While it would be great to take a look at the code from OS/2 -- and maybe even incorporate a few parts -- it's not realistic. Most of the parts have been superceeded by better, open, programs.
Even the potentially good stuff such as the WPS GUI and the b-tree support in HPFS is co-owned with Microsoft -- so there's no chance that we'll ever see it.
Besides, with KDE/Gnome and the file system changes that coming along, there's very little to pick from the carcas if it were available.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Many Slashdotters think that Unix = Good, everything else = bad, but a Unix monopoly would be as bad as a Microsoft monopoly. Many computers users are not even AWARE that there are more than three operating systems available (Unix, Mac, and Windows). Diversity is good! Microsoft's downfall does not mean we should should have yet another monopoly. That's why I welcome alternative systems such as VMS and OS/2 and all of the others.
VMS and OS/2 are extremely good systems. VMS is by far my favorite operating system in the world, and we can only hope that the industry trend is to have MORE different types of systems. This is very good from a security standpoint, because a bug in one system would not be able to take down the whole world. But from a personal point of view, I think most techies would be very bored in a world where there is only one system (I know I would!). The whole excitement of computers is learning new systems, logging on to a new OS for the first time, learning a new language, a new API, etc. If all of the world is an Intel PC running Linux (as it increasingly is becoming), there's isn't a fun any more.
Demand diversity. Run VMS. Run OS/2. Run OS/390. Buy a Tandem. Get an old HP mainframe. Demand support for these systems from ISP's, ISV's, web sites, and the like. A one-platform universe if it is Linux or Windows or TRS-DOS is a very, very boring and dangerous thing.
For starters, if you haven't used VMS since 1986, you are not qualified to comment on it. If I hadn't used Unix since Version 7 would you value my opinion?
./ -mtime=1 -name '*.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]' -exec grep -i text /dev/null '{}' \;
The main selling point of VMS is clustering. VMS is generally regarded as the leader in clustering technology, and no Unix clustering implementation comes close to VMS's clustering technology even 10 years ago. No Unix clustering technology today implement shared disk clusters, distributed lock managers, or load balance sets.
The newest VMS technology, Galaxy, is one of the most revolutionary advancements in OS technology in the last 10 years - the only Unix with it is Tru64 - who stole it from VMS.
In general, VMS is considered significantly more secure and reliable than Unix. Whereas most Unix systems usually crash every few months, VMS systems have been known to be up for over a decade.
The user interface of VMS is much easier to use, and much more powerful than Unix. It is an English-like syntax. If you think it is arcane, I have to ask, what were you using? The VMS command to search a directory tree of HTML files modified since yesterday for a string is:
$ SEARCH/SINCE=YESTERDAY [DIRECTORY...]*.HTML "TEXT"
The Unix equivalent is:
$ find
It appears to me that the VMS command is much easier to look at and understand.
VMS also supports many features that Unix never will such as file versioning, asynchronous I/O, rational memory management and IPC, calling standard, etc., etc., etc., etc.
There are still folks out there running DOS 3, not to mention the Cult of the Amiga and the Trash-80 and the Timex-Sinclair. How do you put a stake through the heart of these beasts? (esp. one that Big Blue sold to banks, governments, etc).
"IBM wants its customers to deploy ebusiness technology applications concurrently with existing OS/2 applications until platform neutrality has been achieved, and then change the operating system," said the spokesman (quoted from the article)
Wonder if the folks who thought then that they couldn't get fired for buying IBM are sweating, or if they're not getting fired for buying Micro$oft now?
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
Manufacturing. Merely as an example. We currently use VMS to handle an entire warehouse. Everything from automated forklifts, to temperature controlled areas, to 100 ft cranes, to weighing of material. For us a move from VMS to UNIX (any form) would cost millions and take a long time. A real long time. And personally I couldn't gaurentee the same level of capabilities and/or reliability. (note though I have not been asked to look into the feasability)
Besides which it does have (by my experience) more reliability than our UNIX boxes. Our computer room got 'hot' one day. Real hot. The UNIX boxen all shut down. Not real nicely either. Almost lost data. The vaxen just kept right on going. Never missed a beat. Dispite a backup tape melting inside one. It really didn't care. Nor did we. There were more of them in a nice redundant rollover cluster. Just replaced the tape and did another backup.
-cpd
What in Linux heaven or M$ hell do they mean? That they can ftp all customer stuff to the other platform, where it can be used? And that from a company, that used M$ tactics since before Bill Gates was born, only not that succesfully... And whom are they going to be friends with? Us, or them? The article leaves much to be enquired.
Stefan.
IBM invented noninteroperability as a marketing strategy long before Microsoft, but failed because Amdahl left them, knew reverse engineering and how the IBM machines were designed.
The truth shall make you fret. (Ankh-Morpork tImes motto)
I enjoyed stability, and the joys of true multitasking (not Win95 multithreading). No geek ever knocked the technical merits of OS/2 in my dorm. They just said "I like it too, but it just doesn't have the applications I need." Too bad for them -- OS/2 never ate my term papers. I enjoyed having a MS compatable OS that ran Win 16 apps better than Windows 3.1.
My OS/2 days are long gone -- as well as the 486 DX-2 40 that I ran it on. I'll remember OS/2 as a testament to the engineering talent of IBM and the ineptness of their Marketing team (OS/2 sponsored the superbowl -- didn't remember that? I'm not suprised).
I wonder if Linux would be as huge today if Windows had some stiffer (OS/2) competition. Maybe if Windows hadn't sucked donkey ass in such a hurry since then maybe we wouldn't have all these developers and user jumping ship to this labor-of-love called Linux.
I'll always remember OS/2 as a window killing piece of engineering bliss that just never blossomed. IBM: you suck.