Virtual PC for OS/2 released

LordNimon writes "Who says OS/2 is dead? Not Innotek, apparently. They just released Virtual PC for OS/2 (aka VPC/2), which allows you to run any PC operating system inside OS/2. They also made available OS/2 "guest" support, which improves the support for running OS/2 under VPC for Windows. I just deleted my Linux partition amd reinstalled it under VPC/2, and now I never have to reboot again! I also heard that that OS/2 development team found a number of bugs in the core code, and the fixes were incorporated into the Windows version. Today is a great day for OS/2 users, especially those that want to try out Linux or run Windows apps that don't work with Odin."

Comments

Cool!

[acceleriter]

The three copies of that Connectix will sell can fund their Mac and Windows versions!

Re:Cool!

[NickIQ]

Just making sure.... But isn't Innotek the name of the bogus company that gets burned down in Office Space? Yeah..... Peter? What's this I hear about you having problems with your TPS reports?

Re:Cool!

[seanw]

yeah, that's the exact same thing I thought. I'm pretty sure it's "Innitech" in Office Space, though (at least, according to salon). Definitely has the same ring to it.

sean

Re:Cool!

[acceleriter]

And you're a complete stick-in-the-mud prick with no sense of humor. Like the other OS/2 user.

I'll bet Sears will be happy.

[Cyberdeck]

I was there last week, and it looked like their package and warehouse tracking system was running OS/2 warp.

Semi-OT: Did OS/2 run faster on IBM machines?

[Mustang Matt]

I used to run OS/2 Warp on my 386DX40 and my friend had a 386SX16, and his machine often seemed to run quicker under OS/2. I don't know if it was the microchannel bus or not. As far as I can remember both machines had similar amounts of ram.

Those Microchannel machines were pretty quick for their day. Too bad it was proprietary.

Re:Semi-OT: Did OS/2 run faster on IBM machines?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: turbo button

Re:Semi-OT: Did OS/2 run faster on IBM machines?

[crawling_chaos]

I doubt that your machine had PCI slots, so what you were probably seeing was the faster graphical performance of a Microchannel video card. The bus was a hell of a lot faster than ISA.

In other news...

[carm$y$]

Is this a follow-up to the time travelling article?
I mean, these guys are at least 7 years too late...

Ouch

[FurryFeet]

I'd love to finally move to OS/2 but I need my Windows apps. This might be the solution... except 239 euros+tax seems a little steep for a home user...
Also, has anyone got any idea what will happen when Windows crashes (as it is liable to do) while running on top of this?

Very wierd world

[BrookHarty]

Are we seeing the trend that one OS is always a M$ OS?

My workplace...

Linux running VMware running Win98
FreeBSD running VMware running WinXP
WinXP running cygwin with Xfree
WinXP running VMWare running Linux
Solaris running citrix clients.
-
I need the driver support, so Ill use WinXP. - me

Re:OS/2 may not be dead...

[MrHat]

No, BeOS is dead. Not dying, dead. The company which owned is was dissolved and all of the code is now the property of Palm, Inc. Palm will continue development on the x86 BeOS during a cold day in hell.

That said, there are a lot of OSS projects trying to create an OS based upon the BeOS APIs and 'kits'.

All of the above is quite a shame. If BeOS rose from the dead today with support for modern chipsets, it'd immediately be the primary OS on my workstation.

Great Day

[smoondog]

This is a great day for OS/2 users

Yes, we are both very happy.

-Sean

So, is it then called...

[__past__]

OS 3/2?

(Come on, someone had to make that joke!)

As a former OS/2 user...

[Spoing]

...I'm deeply puzzled who would buy this now. I can see some sales to specific customers, but not enough to field a COTS product release. Anyone want to enlighten me?

(BTW...the file system monitor tools fam and imon add a feature to Linux that was missing for way too long; generic and instant update of file status for X. This effectively ties the desktop and the current file system state together eliminating the need to 'refresh' an application to find out what's really there. After having this under OS/2 and seeing how poorly it was handled under Windows (9x & NT forks), I was glad to see SGI port and support this for Linux and IRIX (other Unix-like systems can add this support as well if they don't have something like it already).)

Re:As a former OS/2 user...

[Atomic Frog]

...because you are too North American centric perhaps?
Innotek is based in Germany, I believe, and way over in that island called Europe, there are apparently a lot of OS/2 users (i.e. companies) with deep enough pockets to fund this.

If you were still an OS/2 user, you'd know that IBM still offers updates to OS/2, and the past few rounds, they have been heavily subscribed that they can't press enough CD's in time.

Re:As a former OS/2 user...

[Spoing]

If you were still an OS/2 user, you'd know that IBM still offers updates to OS/2, and the past few rounds, they have been heavily subscribed that they can't press enough CD's in time.

Were is the operative word. Over a year ago -- well after IBM promoted migration strategies and recommended customers move off of OS/2 -- I posted a few messages to a local news group offering all my OS/2 software. After about a week, and a couple bites from non-local current OS/2 users, one person who is local to me (Washington DC-Metro) agreed to drop by and take the box of software off my hands. I think I handed over a dozen titles plus 3 boxed versions of OS/2.

At the point that I dumped my OS/2 software, I hadn't used any of it for three or more years.

Since then, I've had zero interest in following OS/2; it's just not a viable platform for any new development. The argument that Europeans use it isn't convincing; I didn't see it at all in three seperate European countries where I worked on banking projects over the past 10 years. The 'OS/2 is popular in Europe' argument has also been used by Amiga advocates yet I noticed only a one Amiga used for slide shows in a public lobby over those same 10 years.

Admitedly none of those contracts delt with automatic teller machines, so maybe OS/2 is still widely deployed there. Personally, I don't care.

If you see OS/2 as viable now, even when IBM hasn't for many years, you'd have a hard time convincing me.

I liked OS/2, I used OS/2, and some of it's features are still not duplicated properly on any other OS. None of the remaining features are compelling, though.

Re:As a former OS/2 user...

[jsse]

They are just recommending desktop users moving off. IBM is still selling OS/2 and actively supporting it. I worked for IBM years ago and they are very technology-oriented in a sense that they don't mind using legacy/old/obsoleted(so to say) system, as long as it fits for a particular purpose. I once assigned to 'reactivate' for inhouse development an pretty old RDBMS system on VM which has only 2 sales records since its birth(RDBMS/2 users hehe), and to my surprise it's much more powerful than any off the shelves RDBMS existed on that days.

OS/2 is sound and healthy and they still generate profit, if we count the OS/2 cashiers and ATM they are selling in bulk.

OS/2 dead?

[rusty0101]

Well, perhaps as a product directly available from IBM, or retail chains, but you can still get OS/2 under it's new name e-com station, from the people woh convinced IBM that it would be a good idea to continue selling it even if IBM wasn't the marketing force behind it.

That company is Serenity Systems, http://www.serenity-systems.com

Whether or not you or I consider it to be a viable product is not really relevent. If Serenity Systems can survive on it, then for them it is a viable product.

BeOS is the only PC based OS that I have used that has handled threads as well as OS/2 does. This is coming from a user running Linux for the most part now. Your own experience may vary. And if you have political arguments against OS/2, BeOS, et all, because they were proprietary OS's, that's fine. That is one of the main reasons I have converted almost completely to Linux. In my own opinion, proprietary does not necesarily mean does nothing right. But you may take that position if you choose.

Then again this in my opinion. I get the option of being wrong.

-Rusty

This is funny

[cheekymonkey_68]

This is good news, considering the effort Microsoft went to kill OS/2 when they released Windows 3.0, this is really funny, the thought of OS/2 users being able to run XP without rebooting...priceless.

And lest we forget...

If it wasn't for OS/2 development, the old Amiga would never have had REXX, that was one cool programming language.

OS/2 2.0 was a better Windows than Windows at the time, and using its Virtual Dos Machines it had the most stable version of Dos.

Wouldn't life had been so much easier if Windows had died, an everyone used OS/2, too bad its a legacy system now.

Re:This is funny

[smoondog]

using its Virtual Dos Machines it had the most stable version of Dos

Not to be too anal, but, Dos itself wasn't more stable, the computer was. Dos still crashed. I remember when i was learning to program in C, I used Borlands IDE in DOS running under OS/2. When I segfaulted, borland would scroll the dead system register info on the screen and request a reboot. All I had to do was hit ctrl-esc and kill the process and restart it. This meant no more crazy DOS bugs! My favorite was the one that caused the system to reboot (without a sound) or the ones that write to video and screw up the screen. Oh, *sigh*, the days of unprotected memory.

-Sean

Re:OS/2 may not be dead...

[Reality Master 101]

Amiga (which is tring to recover).

The Amiga is stone dead, cold, buried in the ground, with maggots having consumed the carcass.

The "Amiga" that is "trying to recover" bears absolutely no resemblence to the original Amiga, except that the company purchased the rights to the name. It's basically a scam to gravy train the Amiga name.

Re:TPS=Turun Pallo Seura

[kikta]

Ever seen Office Space ?

Re:OS/2 may not be dead...

[Atomic Frog]

No, OS/2 can't be released as free abandoned ware because it isn't abandoned yet. At least not officially.

You can still purchase OS/2 online (from IBM, who else?), and IBM is still sending out regular updates to customers.
Yes, that includes single home-users like me. Every 6 months, I get a full CD install set of the latest revision, as well as CD's with update patches, features and programs.

All but 1 of the 5 biggest banks in Canada still run OS/2, and I haven't seen any "Windows transition" machines at a branch yet.

OS/2 Guest Support

[QuantumG]

That's no easy feat. At VMWare they use OS/2 as a part of the internal test suite. If you changed something in the monitor (the core of a virtualizer) you had to boot/halt OS/2 and a bunch of other operating systems before you could check it into cvs. Apart from the business case, the main reason OS/2 isn't supported on VMWare is because it is so damn wacky that it was considered too unstable to publically support. Virtual PC on the other had can support it because they have dual operation modes. They virtualize the processor until something breaks, you get a popup box saying the VM is going to reboot and then it starts up in 100% emulation mode (ie slow). I figure it must have taken a hell of a lot of effort to keep OS/2 running to be able to release it as a product, or maybe it is just especially dodgy/slow.

Re:OS/2 Guest Support

[3rdof5]

It's neiter slow nor does it run in 100% emulation mode. But fact is the VMWare has a bad design it doesn't realy inherit to the V in it's name while VPC does. Yes this might steal some performance but with 2Ghz on every desk who cares about 20% perf. los. The problems VMware had with OS/2 is that OS/2's kernel uses every litle trick in the book that some intel attendum mentioned on page 378 in the fineprint, some of these are even patented. Also keep in mind that even VMware might exist longer on the PC but Connectix has more than 10 years exp with virtualizing Intel CPUs. And just for the Fun I once installed VPC/2 on OS/2 in it run WinNT in that run VPC/Windows which run OS/2 which did run VPC/2 which did run linux. So their design is rock solid. And Connectix only needed to fix 2 things they didn't virtualise properly to get OS/2 running. Inital porting it from Windows to OS/2 was done in less then 3 months.

Re:OS/2 Guest Support

[QuantumG]

Virtualizing? Do you know what the word means? How can they have 10 years experience virtualizing x86 when their product has always been an x86 _emulator_ on Macs? Their port to windows was quick cause their technology is slow and boring. Who cares about 20% perf loss? Well, *me*. Not that you're better off going with vmware for desktop use however, they're focusing on server applications.

Re:OS/2 Guest Support

[acceleriter]

Not slower than VMWare? I guess that's true for OS/2, since VMWare doesn't support it. But VMWare stomps all over Virtual PC on supported operating systems like Windows 2000 or Linux--but that's not because VMWare is particularly better, but because its architecture is different. VMWare doesn't do cycle emulation of the CPU, while Connectix's product does. This is why Connectix's product can run OS/2 (the host OS has nothing to do with it).

Once CPUs become faster, Connectix's stuff will be useful for legacy emulation, such as to replace the one or two OS/2 servers still limping along in some large organizations.

Unfortunately for those deluded into believing OS/2 has any kind of a future, VMWare stopped supporting OS/2 as a guest operating system because of the lack of a market.

Flame war post, Sorry...

[piecewise]

I don't mean to start a fight or offer flaimbait... but what exactly is the point of "hanging on" to an outdated operating system?

Or maybe I'm mistaken. Is OS/2 still a big deal and is widely used? If so, where is it being used so much?

From my perspective this is "cool" I guess but not necessarily too useful...

Re:Flame war post, Sorry...

[SuiteSisterMary]

Unix predates OS/2, Windows, and Dos among others. Does that make it "outdated"?

If you mean System I, II, III, VII and the like, then yes, they're horribly outdated. If you mean stuff like Linux, the various flavours of System V, Release 4, then, it's debatable.

OS/2 Is used Weekly By Most Americans

[lostindenver]

For most americans OS/2 IS used in Most ATM's, Several Brands Of Gas Pumps, And A healthy Chunk of All Point of Sales Apllications. Any Update to Such a stable OS Is definatly Welcome.

Re:OS/2 Sightings

[Hyped01]

IBM cant get rid of OS/2 quite just yet even if they wanted to as some of their big or mid sized metal run "controllers" inside of them that run OS/2 (I think the z/Series for one, including it's previous incarnation). The "controller" is actually a very specialized PC that runs all the busses (hardware, memory, disk, networking, "BIOS", etc) of the machine... it sort of acts like a bus mastering chip and I/O controller. It runs OS/2 and has for ages.

I doubt IBM is yet ready (especially since the other OS alternatives out there have been as mature as they are long enough for the deed to have been done already) to switch those controllers from OS/2 to something else. The machines need 100% uptime (or at least IBM's guaranteeed 99.997%) so the controllers that make them run need to be neat little boxes that sit inside the machine, keep running and nobody needs to know about, running an OS that they have full control over to interact with their proprietary hardware and big metal OS.

I think they'll be keeping it around at least till the promised 2007 via maintenance, etc. And many OS/2 divisions in IBM seem to have decided it's worth more than just keeping it around... OS/2 just got fingerprint login recognition last week from IBM Germany who has been regulary cranking out OS/2 related things (and just recently started training seminars on it, and the new networking components... not things you'd expect for an OS you'd think they are trying to kill...)

Just my 1/2 pence

Robert

OS/2 - Where's it used?

[Snowfox]

I'm curious. Are there areas where OS/2 still enjoys a lot of popularity? Are there any tasks to which OS/2 is still better suited than most other choices?

Stability and near POSIX compliant shell support were strong draws for OS/2 seven years ago, but free UNIXes and NT/Cygwin (and more recently, Mac OS X) have caught up in these areas. It's surprising to find that OS/2 has still got a relatively large following.

Re:OS/2 - Where's it used?

[WildBeast]

Well it's practically the most secure OS out there. How many crackers do you think will try to crack OS/2 boxes? Not many.

Re:OS/2 - Where's it used?

[Hyped01]

> How many crackers do you think will try to crack OS/2 boxes? Not many.

Actually, the number is pretty high. And, it's not script kiddies either. It's real "pros" interested at a way in the largely-run-on-OS/2 banking and insurance networks.

To date number of vulnerabilities found? One. A certain attack on the first release of Warp Server for e-Business would make it shut down the TCP/IP stack and possibly crash the machine (no security or data jeopardized). It was fixed in 18 hours of being reported and the patch was made available that Saturday.

It's not like people dont try... they just dont succeeed... and very few companies run around reporting failed hack attempts. My servers get attacked around the clock with every means I can imagine and many I cant even find references of to break them. They were attacked with Code Red like virii long before it was released... (some of our servers are adult in nature, and it seems serious efforts are made to kill the competition... in talking with other small site owners, they notice the same problems... as ours is getting decent exporse, the attacks have occassionally hit 6 digits worth in a day. Including IRC spawned: DDOS, password and OS exploit hacks the likes of what Steve Gibson of grc.com reported months ago.)

What do I do? Nothing. I watch. I zip the log files. I laugh.

Well, not entirely true. Twice they managed to accumulate multiple gigabytes of httpd error logs in a day filling the log drive, which the server is then set to stop sending data out (in the event of). Changed that.

And I am changing my authentication engine from DominoGoWebserver's to something of my own devising (using a MySQL back end if it can keep up, and if not, then using a DB/2 back end).

There are still definitely things OS/2 does better - like be more secure. And play DiVX's - at least better than comparable Win__ hardware. Dunno about how Linux plays them...

Robert

my OS/2 adventure

[WildBeast]

When OS/2 WARP 4 first came out, I wanted to try it out. I checked plenty of computer stores but they didn't have it. Then one of my friend's father had won a copy of OS/2 WARP 4 in a tournament. Only problem is that my friend lived pretty far away and I didn't have a car. So I took a three hour bus/subway/bus/bus ride to get there.

Yes, I wasted a whole day just to get my hands on OS/2, an impressive OS especially at the time. Unfortunately, IBM killed OS/2. I vowed to never trust IBM. They don't give a damn about marketing. They don't take risks.

Re:my OS/2 adventure

[WildBeast]

yeah sure, where are the new versions that are coming out?

AOL-like demo disks? Never got any

Re:OS/2 may not be dead...

[LordNimon]

I would love to try OS/2 but the problem is you cant find it or buy it anyplace.

eComStation is the new OS/2 and can be purchased at a number of places. Just go to http://www.ecomstation.com/where_to_buy.phtml.

Hard at work at Innotek

[hendridm]

Peter Gibbons: He's going to ask me to work on Sunday and I'm going to do it, because I'm a pussy, which is why I work at Innotek in the first place.

Hmmm, the same people that brought us the Macintosh with a DOS prompt are now bringing us Windows in OS/2.

Oh wait...

IBM support until 2015

[totallygeek]

Our voice response system runs on OS/2 Warp, and IBM has stated they have a contract for driver and os support until 2015!

In other news, here in Texas the state ordered an OS/2 solution for their license plate services. Partly because it was cheaper than a proposed UNIX solution (good, because it was OpenServer), and partly because they figured people wouldn't attempt to install software from home on the machines (OS/2 does not run most Windows stuff now).

Re:IBM support until 2015

[Anonynnous Coward]

partly because they figured people wouldn't attempt to install software from home on the machines

You have to hand it to them, that's intelligent thinking. Rather than buy Windows and spend a fortune in time and money trying to lock it down, just buy something that there's not much of a software market for that does the job.

good times when i worked with OS/2

[fabiolrs]

Once I worked as admin in a company near my home. OS/2 was the OS on the servers and I always thought if was a great product... it almost never crashed (I saw it crashing once and i dont even remember how it was... BSOD? :)))... ok, it was almost a decade ago I really dont remember) we used to compile some unix softwares on it... it was great... our system was a dual-boot of OS/2 and windows NT (i dont even remember de version, one of the first maybe) and OS/2 was hell lot faster! much more reliable (in terms im not even going to mention)! and much, much, much more easy to deal with!

great product! :)))

Resistance is Futile

[gelfling]

In the near future all computers will be OS/2. Prepare to be absorbed into the collective.

Re:OS/2 Sightings

[Vryl]

By and large, old operating systems never die. Well, Multics did, but I have seen DOS 1.0 and 2.0 still going in strange places. CNC machines and other things. Never throw old OS media out, you just never know when it might be useful

Re:They are still using it?

[richie2000]

Did the clerk look like Elvis? ;-)

Seriously, in Sweden OS/2 is used for stuff like the internal ticket system for SJ (Swedish Rail), with hundreds of low-cost (IBM P300 w/ 64MB RAM) terminals spread out in several call center locations. They have been trying to migrate to NT but that project is now three or four years behind the initial schedule.

State of Texas uses it

[SpiceWare]

I've seen it running everytime I update my car tags.

Re:OS/2 may not be dead...

[acceleriter]

Wow! Maybe I can buy some sub-standard, incompatible word processor that requires a call-home registration like DeScribe! Yay!

Re:OS/2 is dying

[acceleriter]

ATMs. Now there's a lucrative target for software manufacturers. That dead horse has been beaten since the first OS/2 PSP Technical Conference. Got anything currently being developed using OS/2? Gawd, I'm surprised you didn't bring up that fine point of sale system Salepoint, which runs OS/2. The chief advantage of that? That the clerks can't install their own software, because there isn't any!

Re:performance?

[acceleriter]

Love all the caveats. OS/2 driver support, even for IBM hardware, has never been up to the par that Windows driver support has been. That's because Mastrianni, the only guy who seems to know how to write a device driver, can't write them all.