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? :)

Comments

Pretty functional for dead.

[cybrthng]

I don't know how many times its been thrown out that OS/2 is dead. As of lately there have been some interesting developments that will let OS/2 live as long as linux and windows exist.

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!

It's _still_ dead Jim

[Spoing]

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.

Excellent news - Celebrate Diversity!

[VAXman]

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.

Platform neutrality? What do they mean???

[mazur]

"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,"

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.