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!

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...

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: turbo button

Great Day

[smoondog]

This is a great day for OS/2 users

Yes, we are both very happy.

-Sean

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...

[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.

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

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 - 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