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OS/2 Going, Going... Gone
An anonymous submitter writes "IBM has posted a Software Withdrawal notice on their web site announcing that the OS/2 operating system, in all its forms, will cease to be available for purchase from IBM as of March 12, 2003. For users who have purchased the two year OS/2 Software Choice subscriptions, service will continue until December 31, 2004." We posted a pretty good story about the history of OS/2 earlier this year.
Or rather, OS/2 is dead.
Rest in peace.
OS/2 was an excellent system, technically. Certainly far better than Windows. Trouble was, DOS+Windows was Good Enough and cost about 1/5th as much. IBM, at that time, couldn't market space heaters in Nome Alaska in January.
Best Slashdot Co
It seems that IBM will support the mentioned part numbers until December31,2004. Over 2 years of support on a discontinued product? If only other companies would have the same ideas. ;-)
Not dead, OS/2 lives on in Windows NT/2K/XP/.NET
Check out eComStation (www.ecomstation.com), which is a beefed up OS/2 distribution. You get lots of neat goodies like SMP support, new filesystems, better driver support, X-Windows, and all sorts of other stuff.
oh, wait, you said "OS/2" not "PS2"... for a second there I thought I cared...
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Before you all go posting requests to IBM to open source OS/2, just remember whose code is in there: Microsoft. Remember, it was a joint venture between the two companies. Do you think that Microsoft would allow it to be open sourced? Anyway, it's technologically behind all the free Unixes, so what possibly could one learn from it, other than what was actually possible 10 years (or more) ago on realtively low-specced machines.
Stick Men
Fare the well, OS/2. We hardly knew ye.
_______
2B1ASK1
I thought about trying OS/2 out recently, trying to get away from Windoze, but with this news... i doubt it. sorry IBM. sorry.
OS/2 is heavily used in ATM (bancomates) machines.
What happens with support for that stuff?
Switching to Linux?
It really was great for multitasking. And, you could format a floppy disk while you were doing other things! But, seriously, for those of us who could only afford one computer, it let us use it while also allowing the users access. It sure as hell beat DESQView or Windows 3.1.
A moment of silence for the Little Operating System That Could Have Been.
Now it's just another corpse on the bloody trail of the rampaging Alternative PC OS Killer that is Micro$oft.
Rest in peace, OS/2
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
After it's all said and done in 2004, if they would release it open source, or, better yet, just make it public domain.
Eveyone always says OS/2 was great technically, and that it was far better than Windows. Can someone give those who aren't in the know more details about how OS/2 was better than windows?
It was quite nifty. It was running a 486DX25 with 16 MB of RAM and a 1M video card. For its OS it was running OS/2, as opposed to MS/DOS, which made me feel much safer. One wonders what they will run ATMs on in the future. And NO, I don't really think Linux is ready for that sort of thing. Hrrmmm... mabye QNX?
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
It was still available? I thought it died years ago...shows how much I pay attention.
This does make sense, IBM hasn't really marketed OS/2 for quite some time, so it's conceivable that they would discontinue selling and supporting it...
Sound familiar?
Microsoft has done this too with their previous versions of Windows (Read: Not their money makers)
Still, it's a shame to see it go...
Join the TWIT army now!
My company still uses OS/2 for some functions and they rarely fall down in the way that say NT 4.0 would however NT 2000 seems just as stable it took Windows awhile to reach that point.
I always thought the interface felt very CDE-like and had some interesting features. It is a shame but pricing+bad marketting did them in. I remember when Warp reached the market place before Win95. People at that time were still more worried about Big-bad Blue than Microsoft.
I know there was a theater company that used OS/2 for their platform in some ticketing devices. I remember going by the box and thnking how weird that is.
Where have you seen OS/2 still lingering in IT?
_______________________________
ACK
Microsoft's actions to kill OS/2 are well documented and need not be repeated here, except to say that they did a good job making it look like IBM's fault - MS basically told IBM if they distributed it with their own machines or continued to market it (and Lotus Smartsuite which died under similar circumstances) MS would do everything to prevent IBM from having access to Windows 95 in any sane way short of refusing to sell it to them. IBM capitulated, and the rest is history. For more details, the entire story is documented in the Findings of Fact in the Microsoft trial.
OS/2 follows BeOS, not to mention half a dozen other upstarts, in disappearing. I could say it's another nail in the coffin for choice, but I guess that nail was driven into OS/2's coffin in 1995. Right now the free software community seems to be the only place where choice may stay alive - by keeping platforms open, and by making source available allowing for the possibility of porting almost any open application to any open platform, choice has a chance, and probably the first chance it's had in several years. Vendors like Sun and RedHat have become a part of this (despite the constant protests about Sun, I think they're one of the good guys, NIS, NFS, OpenLook, OpenOffice, and many other innovations and applications have been given to the community over the years, and while Java isn't open source or free, it is source available, and the restrictions - given the 500lb gorilla that stands against Sun - are rational if disappointing.)
Linux, the BSDs, Atheos, and the upcoming BeOS clones, are only viable though because of this base of software that can either run on them now, or can be made to run on them. That means constant work keeping the base of free and open software relevent.
Making the alternatives stay sensible and rational will not happen by itself. Resources need to be devoted, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman [house.gov] or senator [senate.gov]. Tell them that choice is important to you, and that it's important that the base of open, free, software available with source is constantly kept up to date, viable, and relevent to today's needs. Tell them that you appreciate the efforts of free and open software producers, but if one day those applications ceased to be updated in line with modern needs, you would be forced to find less secure and intelligent alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how monopolies and a failure to keep the alternatives relevent destroys all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on his or her policy on choices, on relevence, and keeping the free and open software base relevent.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
Maybe IBM could be nice and open some of the OS/2 source code up to the community? At least the parts where they hold IP rights?
Maybe enough source could be opened as to create a server product to run under Linux or other Operating Systems? So current OS/2 shops could have an easy migration from OS/2 to another OS?
Personally, I would love to the WPS running along with my favorite window manager.
Cool, now the way is paved for OS/3! I'm holding my breath!
Meridian systems use VXWorks from Wind River. As do Nortel's newer network gear. Their Bussiness Communication Manager, a small key system/PBX with IP telephony, proxy server, voice mail etc, uses NT 4.0 Embedded.
I worked for a while, in '97-'98, as a systems engineer at the University of Virginia as a technician and systems engineer. I would get "Rock" duty (round the clock) every month or so and one of the systems I had to support was a patient tracking system for the UVA Hospital. It had a graphical user interface showing the floors of the hospital and what patient was where. It was an OS/2 Warp 3 system. Quite nice. It was the HARDWARE that kept glitching, making me aware of this system at 3am in the morning, sadly...
I tried to run Warp 3 a few years before but it did not work out. I really found the interface unattractive and the lack of apps difficult. I kept running Windows 3.1 sessions under it to the point that I just started using Windows 3.1. Sad.
A nice os. I also tried to run NeXTSTEP but had to take that offline for lack of app reasons (the interface was wonderful). Happily I run NeXTSTEP today and there is no lack of apps...well, it's actually OS X I am running -- but same difference.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
OS/2 Going, Going... Gone
Shouldn't that be, "OS/2 Going, Going... Going"?
It will be availibe for purchase for a few months, and for support a couple of years.
Have you read my journal today?
Re: your sig "2B1ASK1"
Is that a Masonic reference?
I am still running OS/2 on my main system. I have been running Post Road Mailer 3.0. I still have not been infected by any virus. When people say, I might have sent out email because I have contracted another outlook virus, I laugh.
You are still running OS/2. Many ATMs and cash registers still run OS/2.
Fight Spammers!
Just raise the taxes on crack.
Check out www.ecomstation.com :)
This is essentially OS/2. I checked up on some usenet groups discussing IBM's announcement, and it seems clear that the eCS folks knew about this when they started eCS, so OS/2 (in the form of eCS) should be around much much longer than 2004!
-Dave
moo
goodbye is just to good a word so i say fare thee well
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered OS/2 community when CmdrTaco confirmed that OS/2 market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming close on the heels of a recent Slashdot survey which plainly states that OS/2 has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. OS/2 is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict OS/2's future. The hand writing is on the wall: OS/2 faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for OS/2 because OS/2 is dead. Things are looking very bad for OS/2. As many of us are already aware, OS/2 continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
etc.etc.etc. You get the idea :o)
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
If I recall, I read that many ATMs (automated teller machines, not asynchronous transfer mode) use(d) OS/2 as their software. Don't know why. Don't know if they still do. Don't really care.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
At the time, OS/2 had extremely heavy system requirements compared to Win 3.x. In particular, I recall that it required an enormous amount of memory to run comfortably by comparison to Windows. This was at a time where memory was running at probably $100 or more per 4 MB (my own memory is failing), and at the time, it was just really difficult to justify for many people. Towards the latter part of the '90s, its requirements didn't seem so onerous, but by then Windows had become too entrenched and Win95 was on its way.
I also strongly believe Win/OS2 killed any incentive to write native OS/2 apps.
OS/2 also was able to alienate many power users because of the install process. It was FAR worse than Debian, and we all know how many people complain about that. I was a very competant OS/2 user (and DOS/ Win3.11 for that matter). When I went to install my CD-ROM drive on a stable OS/2 Warp (that's 3.0 unless otherwise specificed, for you younguns), the OS ended up formatting my hard drive and doing a fresh install -- WITHOUT MY CONSENT! My backups were as good as my temper was short. I took my backups, good all the data I needed, and went to DOS/Win3.11 until I could get NT 3.51.
This is complete utter nonsense. By late 1994 early 1995, almost all cdroms were IDE. IDE cdroms did not require special installation, and were recognized by the base IDE device driver that runs your hard drive. Not only that, formatting the boot partition, like in any other operating system, cannot occur. Not only that, but OS/2 never had a bootable cdrom, so you would have had to boot from disk in order to format your boot partition.
The installation program was very weak when supporting proprietary hardware, but the base install was cake. Remember, because OS/2 supported FAT AND HPFS, the installer would ask you if you want to format it FAT, HPFS, or not at all. To suggest it just formatted your drive is insane.
I ran OS/2 from 1991 until 1998, even had a 3 note BBS running on an OS/2 box for four years. The installer was cumbersome, but it was ahead of what was in Windows 3.1. Should it have come with more drivers? Yes. Was it bad because it didn't? Of course not. You simply had to use a 80 line config.sys file.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Not exactly...
My understanding (as limited as that may be) of IBM's OS/2 "subscription" is more like a support contract (like you get with Cisco.) You'll get notified of patches, updates, fixes, etc... However, if the contract/subscription lapses you're still able to run the software, since you own the license.
With the MS subscription model, you are purchasing a limited lifetime license. If you terminate the subscription, then after the license period expires, you can no longer run the software.
Big difference, actually. Not that I don't agree that the MS plan is doomed--just that the same afliction does not apply to the IBM OS/2 situation.
If you read Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning Was the Command Line, he blame's the trials of OS/2 on IBM's unwillingness to embrace the development community.
--- My dad's political betting
Release it's source code under GPL?
This would be a great opportunity for IBM to show it's Cluefull....
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Well, the NatWest ATM on Piccadilly that ate my card a few weeks back was running Win2K, as I found out when it crashed and rebooted...
OS/2 is/was a kickass OS that 1000 books about bad marketing could be written about. It was at least as stable as DOS, if not more so. Seiko paging used OS/2 as the operating system for all their watch paging terminals They ran on IBM 486DX2/66 computers. The paging system used the SCA subcarrier of FM stations. Satellites were used to receiev the signal and then it went through this paging terminal and out the FM transmiter from there. I was Chief Engineer for two of these FM stations for two years until Seiko went out of business and during that time the number of reboots to those computers numbered ZERO! Show me an OS other then pure UNIX today that can make that boast! I also remember that these computers were being used under fairly heavy load 24/7, because each one had to process the data from the entire transponder (Which included every Seiko page made in the U.S.), and send out only the ones desired for the area it transmitted to.
There was this program which created a cute little cat who would chase your mouse around on your screen's background. That alone put it light years beyond any modern OS.
Sears, for one. All their in-store servers run OS/2. Don't have a link to prove it, but a family member is working on the project.
:-/
But (surprise, surprise!) they're working on migrating to something else
Why can't they just sell it without support? If I were an IBM shareholder, I'd want to know why they are just throwing away money, even if it's not very much. If reproducing the CD-ROMs isn't economical, they could estimate their annual sales and auction off the rights to distribute that number of CD-ROMs to somebody like Cheapbytes. I don't see why *any* software package has to "just disappear".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Excellent as it was, OS/2 was also hopelessly tied to the i386 architecture
:)
:)
AMEN! I wrote device drivers (in what seems like a previous life) for OS/2, Windows, etc. and if you let your assembly-level debugger* wander through the OS/2 kernel there was absolutely no doubt that this was hand-coded assembly. It was beautiful assembly code, but I remember one day, in the midst of debugging, realizing "They'll never port this to another chip...ever!" The entire kernel was designed around how the 386 was designed....to the point where we kept Intel chip specs in our library. SWe had a good laugh when they announced they were going to port OS/2 to PPC.
* Yes, in those days we didn't have fancy, schmancy source-level debuggers, at least not for kernel/driver work. WinICE was like crack when it came out - everyone doing DD work HAD to have it.....and now I write Java and I don't even produce real assembly anymore. Oh, the good old days.
The PMShell (graphical OS/2 environment) was really great and very mature in its day.
I wish that IBM would release this as open-source, as it would make a stable, fast, well-documented, featureful, beautiful alternative to X-Windows under Linux.
Plus, it's got an API that is actually good. It would bring Linux one step closer to the desktop.
-kris
The end of OS/2 was spelled out clearly on August 17, 1995, when OS/2's original chief architect, Gordon Letwin, described its insurmountable barriers in this posting to comp.os.os2.advocacy.
Nooface
In Search of the Post-PC Interface
Imagine you are a PC maker, what operating system would you prefer: An OS made by some evil corporation or an OS made by some evil corporation which is also your competitor?
Compaq/HP/Dell whoever will never use an OS controlled by IBM and IBM will never use an OS controlled by Compaq/HP/Dell/someotherPCmaker.
BeOS had bigger chances of succeeding than OS/2...
Actually I think this is rather obvious. Why there are so many people crawling around claiming OS/2 failed because of poor marketing or too good Windows compatibility is beyound me.
"Either way I'm all for getting rid of legacy software - one step at a time."
Umm... wouldn't this include Unix? Unix predates virtually every other operating system currently in wide use? It certainly is more "legacy" than OS2.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
and will continue to be supported on enterprise contracts by IBM. It is used in financial applications extensively and is STILL more solid than any windows app. They use it because of legacy applications that connect to mainframe computers via SNA with M$ won't or can't support but OS2 does nicely. It will be a LOOOONNNNG time before they find anything else. The large financial institution I work for has gone so far as to purchase and store source code with IBM's blessing for use in the future, under license of course....
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Would it be worthwhile to get the source code for OS/2? Could there be anything in there that could be cannibalized for other alternative operating systems?
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
IBM: It's a good machine. What model would you like?
IBM: We don't sell ThinkPads with OS/2.
IBM: Yes, but we don't sell ThinkPads with OS/2.
IBM: Yes; we wish they hadn't done that.
IBM: The Software Division. They have no say on hardware.
IBM: I'm sorry, sir. What model of ThinkPad would you like?
IBM: There isn't one.
IBM: It's not possible.
IMO, that attitude (IBM not supporting IBM) is what killed OS/2. The corporate decision not to market OS/2 to consumers, made the week before release of Win95, didn't help either.
-- Rich
- - -
"The sixth sick shiek's sixth sheep's sick."
Are you saying you have OS/2 running on PPC?! I remember from a few years ago there was a big uproar in the OS/2 community- the PPC version of OS/2 Warp was finally ready after many delays and then IBM decided to shelve it. A big loss for the still PPC platform, but something may have come out of it after all, considering your post.
I remember having to install fixpacks from floppies. I actually found some unofficial utility/hack to install them while the system was running and then reboot immediately, but the official way was kinda lame, especially since fixpacks were some 20-30MB. That's just too many floppies. This was on Warp 3.0.
In OS/2 version 3 or later, the WPS had a tight integration between the GUI and the file system. If you've fiddled around with /proc under Linux you have some idea about how the WPS treated the system. For example, under the WPS all file information was a part of the file -- not a Windows-style link or KDE/Gnome .desktop file.
Now, desktop environments like KDE and Gnome have handy features like drag-and-drop audio file creation, extensive networking features, and multimedia plugins...yet I am just now getting the same responsiveness between the GUI the file system. One annoying failure is the Gnome file load file box -- the file list isn't updated as files are renamed/added/removed.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Actaully IBM has been wanting to do this for a long-long time. But since a couple key customer was refusing to wean themselves off IBM hung in there.
I've had to develop for and support OS/2 and even work with IBM on projects. I can't stand OS/2 it had a poor architecture, inaccuracies in the API documentation, and I couldn't never see what people liked about the interface. The only thing it had going for it is it wasn't MS. It was the OS the "anything but MS" crowd until Linux caught on. Thank god its finally dead.
It isn't 'gone' until March 12th, next year. ;)
Quite frankly, I believe that what microsoft did to IBM would be enough to warrant a breakup.
.dlls, filesystem layout, etc). OSX has a great backend and GUI, although it's a bit oversimplistic, and geared twoard home users. Unix has a great backend, but a horrific GUI (X, Gnome, and KDE are nice, but they do very little to tie into the backend of the OS, which is quite fragmented)
Unfortunately, the attempt to break up microsoft was carried out on the basis of IE being bundled with Win98 (big deal! OS2 bundled a browser, as did almost all Unixes (the browser being either Mosaic or lynx)). Netscape got pissed, and sued.
Now, let's think about this. Netscape was based around free software. Navigator never really made any signifigant amount of money for netscape. It wasn't agressively developed, etc.
On the other hand, IBM poured billions upon billions of dollars into OS2 to make sure it was an GOOD OPERATING SYSTEM. All of the sudden, Microsoft refuses to license code to IBM, and the operating system dies.
This seems like one hulluva antitrust violation. It's possible that Microsoft intended all along to ditch IBM.
I dobut that there was ever an operating system which was as agressively developed as OS2 was (MacOS evolved slowly over the course of 15 years, and eventually merged with NExTSTEP, DOS was writen and never signifigantly updated after version 2.0, Linux was an accident, NT was put on the backburner at MS for several years, The commercial unixes were expensive, and Win9x wasn't really an OS at all.)
OS2 had a good GUI with a powerful backend. Nothing else has this today. Windows XP/NT is all proprietary, and 'dumbed down' to an extent. Granted, windows has a lot going for it on the backend - it's simple, yet powerful (ie. device drivers,
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Actually, Passport was an acquisition, not a Microsoft innovation.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
IBM disk drives are following standards. Using IBM drives does not make Compaq/HP/Dell/whoever dependent on IBM, they can switch to another vendor anytime because IBM does not control neither the IDE nor the SCSI platform.
Using OS/2 on the other hand, would make them dependent on IBM, because IBM obviously controls the OS/2 platform and you can't get an OS/2 compatible system from some other company.
Which is why BeOS had a 10+ year life span that brought in billions of dollars for Be...
Well, first OS/2 hardly made billions of dollars. Maybe a few million, if that. Secondly, OS/2 lived so long because it was used on IBM's own hardware.
I may get the dates wrong, but around the 1993 timeframe I was part of team at a large Cdn. oil company that built a CICS system under OS/2. The interesting part was that we were using the mainframe (big IBM iron - 3090-600) as a terminal server. At the time, CICS OS/2 was meant to be used as a terminal for host CICS. It was such an innovative use of the technology that IBM did a special story on our project as part of the S/390 Magazine (it was broadcast over their internal TV network - woo hoo). Unfortunately, all the suits got the credit for all the work that us grunts did. Cest la vie.
A few years later, as part of the same project, I developed an X.25 based POS authorization server using OS/2. A small 386 with 32 MB of memory ran DB2, CICS, and the POS application (written in C++ using CSet++). It supported 150 locations, with no problems *at all*.
After I left the company, I was then contracted to redevelop the POS server code to support some vastly expanded functionality. Again, all done under OS/2. We upgraded everything to Warp 4, all new products. It worked flawlessley.
Today, the same code is *still* running, and is handling over 250 locations, processing roughly a billion dollars of business a year.
It was inexpensive to put together, relatively inexpensive to support, and rarely ran into any problems. It was *very* stable. I attributed a lot of the stability to the OS itself. It was well laid out, and a joy to develop in. Yes, the API's were a bit strange, but once you got the hang of the strange API names (DosQueryThis, DosOpenThat), it became very easy to do things.
IBM never knew how to market OS/2. First it was a business OS (1.3), then it was a home OS (2.0), then it was a business os (3.0), then it was an everything OS (4.x). They could never make up their minds.
Technically, it was very well laid out OS. I liked it *much* better than NT 3.5.1, but that was just a personal feeling more than anything else - I really disliked the API that Microsoft carried from Windows to NT. It still sucks, and I avoid it like the plague.
The big problem with OS/2 is that it never got off on the right foot. Memory prices were so high when it first came out that it was a very expensive OS to run. So it was restricted to the corporation. When memory prices did come down, the FUD from Microsoft kept people from adopting it for home use.
I even ran an OS/2-dedicated BBS - it was the second OS/2 BBS in Calgary, and it was up and operational for about 3 years. Then the Internet happened, and that, as they say, was that.
While I do mostly Unix development these days, I do miss using OS/2.
RIP OS/2.
I loved OS/2 Warp
So many great memories.
The first ime I saw the Work Place Shell. It was work of art when compared to that monstrosity called PROGMAN that Win 3.1 had. I still think that Win9x/XP's shell is not as good. Even the simple Eye candy stuff like transparent background on ICON text.
The first time I used PMMAIL for OS/2. Still a great e-mail app and the only shareware I have EVER resgisterd... I still use the windows version of PMMAIL, it is showing its age but it is great. http://www.blueprintsoftwareworks.com
The first time the Single Input Que was completly SMASHED beyond recovery, and the many many other times after that. Sure the system was still running, my downloads continued, apps kept grinding away ok, just couldn't do a thing with the computer (this had a 'bandaid' fix in version 4, but it dodn't work very well).
The first time I realized how many webapges had converted to FRAMES, which IBM's Webexplorer did not support. I kept wondering why so many pages looked like trash.
When winnuke was making the rounds a lot of cheating Quake players would try to 'nuke' my machine to make me lose. Too bad I was playing Quake under OS/2. That pirated/leaked/whatever copy of QUAKE/2 was faster than the native DOS version and the Win32 version on my machine.
What killed OS/2? In my opinion...
1 - The lack of a good browser, IBM's webexplorer blew chunks, Netscape OS/2 version were old and unstable.
2 - That GD Single Input Que. Not problem with if the apps being use are well written and 'bullet proof'. But there wasn't much choice for apps in the OS/2 world.
3 - No games. Thats why I changed. Online gaming was adictive. It was the oonly reason I turned on my computer for about a year or so.
4 - Marketing. Who gives a flip if some italian/spanish/portugues/whatever nun is using Warp? Good grief! lots of their commercials were in FORIEGN languages with subtitles. That alone excludes the majority of windoze lusers that are too lazy to read!
5 - It did not grow with hardware. Good luck getting almost any new soundcard, modem or video card working under OS/2. Have a large hard drive? Anything over 4.3GB is going to require some updates. Want to use any USB devices? Have fun writing them.
That said. I miss OS/2. I think I might keep an eye out for a low end P2 system to install it on just for old times sake. There are a lot of open source linux apps ported over now... sure it seems illogical to install warp just to use ported linux apps that are allready installed on my Win2k or Mandrak machine, but who said geeks are logical?
~Z
Will that _ever_ be said about Windows? *** Shudder ***
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Seriously, you moderators who modded this canned drivel up to 5(!) should have your mod priveleges revoked.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
First, it was compatible with Win 3.1. IBM had rights from thier failed agreement with MSFT to distibute the Win16 binaries as part of OS/2. Developers saw that they could write one version of code that would run on both Windows and OS/2. This made development of an OS/2 native app hard to justify.
Second, I remember doing accounting software back in 87/88 and evaluating a port to OS/2 for an important client. IBM wanted $800 up front, plus a $200 OS/2 sale for access to their SDK's. Thanks, but..
MSFT does give away a LOT of info about thier platform, and proselytizes quite effectively.
And to those who say OS/2 was good, remember that this is where LanMan was born. We are still paying the price for this with ANY MSFT based lan, weak encryption, NetBIOS exploits, etc.
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.
I said this before many times about IBM ...
.NET they will pick it up in no time. Thus, this is why they are a successful company.
1) IBM is NOT a product company. I.e.: they are a solution company.
2) IBM targets its bottom line like no other tech. company does. I.e.: they will kill anything that doesn't translated to $$$ and start things that do.
If tomorrow IBM sees less value in Linux, they will drop it too. If they see value in
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
This is complete utter nonsense. By late 1994 early 1995, almost all cdroms were IDE.
Agreed. Total nonsense. Hence, why I moved to Windows. Not all CDROMs were IDE, and OS/2 also attempted to support not only new hardware, but also some of the older hardware. I guess there were a few bugs.
Remember, because OS/2 supported FAT AND HPFS, the installer would ask you if you want to format it FAT, HPFS, or not at all. To suggest it just formatted your drive is insane.
I'm not merely suggesting it, and believe me if it had not happened to me I would be leery of believing it too, I'm outright claiming it. I didn't care to replicate the problem, and I certainly won't go back now and try to figure it out. I went through my share of installs on more than one machine (none of them IBM, strangely enough), and I recognized the format question. I was not given a prompt. It just took the initiative. Perhaps the CDROM driver made the hard drive look corrupt and it no longer recognized any real data on it?
Let's leave the personal attacks out of this. It would be one thing to say that it never happened to you, but it's another to state that my claim is insane.
At a trade show, he went to the Microsoft booth, and asked what he had to do to get started with Windows development. They handed him a developers kit right there.
He went to the IBM booth, and asked then what he had to do to get started with OS/2 development. They handed him an application to their developer program so he could ask for permission to develop for OS/2 (for a large fee, of course).
I realized OS/2 was truly doomed about a year later, when I went into Egghead, and saw MSDN Library subscriptions for sale. The only OS/2 development tool I saw at Egghead was the Watcom C/C++ compiler.
Another thing that hurt OS/2 was the lack of good third-party documentation. Where was the equivalent of Petzold's wonderful Windows books, that got so many of us started on Windows programming? There IS a book on OS/2 programming by Petzold, but it was often out of print. I'm sure IBM could have managed to get it back into print if they'd wanted.
In fact, it's even better. You can still purchase directly from IBM via their Passport Advantage program. You pay for license _and_ annual support subscription.
A license sounds pretty much like a brand new copy of software to me.
That point of purchase has not been end-of-lifed.
...The genius running IBM at the same time OS/2 was doing well made some pretty stupid remarks about the internet as well.
:)
Doing well is a relative term, it was doing well as far as I was concerned because I used it
So far, I always seem to like the underdogs. OS/2, Linux, Mac OS X....
sigh.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
OS/2 may have the support cables pulled and IBM is pulling the sheet over it's head, but it's still in wide use in a lot of industries. It was a solid 32bit pre-emptive multi-tasking system for it's time (before Win95). The only other alternative at the time was real Unix systems but that was a huge cost for small businesses. OS/2 provided the reliability and stability that some businesses needed.
The majority of the current user base is banks. They have (or perhaps had?) a HUGE investment in OS/2. Most ATMs ran and are still running OS/2 for their operating system. The uptime is incredible so without support or the ability to continue the product, most businesses must get off of OS/2 asap. Of course we've known that it was a burning platform for years now but with such a large installed base and legacy applications running off it, who has the time or budget to move off.
We currently use OS/2 with our train control systems as well as a few other key safety systems. It's just as reliable as it was years ago and our plan to move to another platform doesn't manifest itself until the 2004-2005 timeframe.
IBM had ported CICS to it and it ran flawlessly.
I actually wrote code for this platform for Sears about 10 years ago - and they're still using it.
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
osFree
They're currently creating drop-in replacements for OS/2's command line utilities.
PC-DOS 2000? Does this mean that DOS has officially outlived OS/2 Warp?
OS/2 also had a program similar to Windows Update in 1995 or so, except that it didn't require a browser and used open protocols to run.
I can't for the life of me remember the exact name, though. Anyone else remember?
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
In terms of ease of use on the whole I don't remember many people complaining about that. Configuring OS/2 to run a dos game inside of a window was much easier then configuring a Windows 3.0 .pif. Modifying icons and stuff was much easier. Certainly in the 1.0-1.2 days and the perhaps in the 4.0+ days; but from 1.3-3.0 it was no harder than windows for sure.
I remember people complaining about the OS/2 desktop being ugly. Which was weird because with the color coded folders and some neat icon effects OS/2 really could look quite modern (again much better than windows in its day); but the initial installed desktop.... blech. BTW you still hear this quite a bit about Linux apps.
It's ironic, because today I took out my old Warp 3 CD, and downloaded the fixpacks. I plan to revisit this OS, see what it can do, and overall, just let the nostolgia of this pre-win95 OS toy with me. :)
It's been a long time.
Changing drivers in a config.sys was part of using a PC back then. Anyone who installed an OS needed to know there way around autoexec.bat and config.sys. It was only with windows and the massive (and undocumented) .ini files that people started to give up on understanding what was going on during boot.
Anyway an OS/2 install back then is much easier than a Windows install today; much less a Linux install.
To suggest it just formatted your drive is insane.
I wish you would have told that to my 3.0 installation which merrily formated some of my "extra" partitions for me without bothering to ask. It used that to delete an NT and a lunix installation.
The real travesty is that I continuined to try and use the OS for about 3 months after that foul up, despite IBM never being able to explain why it happened. Their best suggestion was that my partition table wasn't "standard".
--- I do not moderate.
...because you can still get PC-DOS.
This time-tested and useful operating system is now Y2K compliant and it supports the euro symbol.
That's the IBM experience - value and support.
And the best part? It's only a $50 download.
Do you guys remember seeing DOOM running full speed in a window on OS/2? What a crowd that generated at Comdex. Up until then, graphical action games/apps on the PC were only done in DOS. The OS/2 DIVE system allowed fullblown multimedia apps to run at very acceptable speeds in a window.
I heard that Microsoft saw what OS/2 could do( DOOM in a window ) and paid ID Software a ton of cash to some up with a way to do the same in MS Windows. The birth of MS DirectX maybe?
I think OS/2 was the first PC OS to ship with a multimedia subsystem and apps to use it( video player, videodisk controller, syncronized video/sound, sound player/recorder, etc ). Maybe the Amiga had this way before but no on the x86 PC hardware.
LoB
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
There is one here where I work using OS/2. The weird thing is it boots the entire GUI. I would think it wouldn't do all of that for the simple text screens it displays (which are a maximized WPS text window).
Who hell still uses this dinosaur anyhow?
AFAIK it is still the best OS available for a 286. But then again, who still uses 286? (... Wait a minute, my terminal emulator runs on a 286 with DOS.)
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Both the micro-channel and the push for PPC also had another reason: the "PC platform" is 70's hardware patched up with many ugly hacks and a few good ones that thrive on other platforms as well (USB, PCI...) . The much hyped IA64 platform will hopefully finally kill off the antiquated crap mots of us are using now.
Don't forget how in 1994 at the COMDEX computer show, HP pulled 1/2 of their PC's( which were running OS/2 ) from the floor the night before the show. This happened after HP executives getting a threatening call from Bill Gates, then CEO of Microsoft. Still people say it's all IBMs fault. I think not.
.Net stuff and Microsoft starts dropping patent bombs on them all.....
And how come there isn't one example of a threat to Windows on x86 that's succeeded in all these years? Look how many times Microsoft ends up in court or settling out of court with "partners". No company is perfect and when you go up against a monopoly who uses illegal means to fight you, you're gonna look like a dumb ass all the time.
Now Linux is going after Microsoft from the ankles. There is no business model behind it except in software services so Microsoft can't fight Linux companies directly. That is until they start using
It's good to see someone remembers history the way it was and not the way it's rewritten.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Linux is IBM's new version of OS/2, in a way.
But far better supported by them than OS/2 ever was.
Wait a minute, Microsoft officially retires MS DOS this December 31st. :)
You will have to upgrade!, how can you work on unsupported OS?
Moving to OS/2 will buy you only two more months
MSDOS: 20+ years without remote hole in the default install
Uh huh.
I had a system which wouldn't run Windows 3.1.
Windows 1.0 didn't even have windows. Doesn't really mean anything in context of...well...anything from 95 beyond.
You are aware that OS/2 made it to Version 4, right?
It's been a long time.
Just to pick one example:
At the time of the OS 2.0 release you really couldn't multi task in a Windows / Dos environment. You had task switching with lots of problems and dos apps pretty much didn't run inside of windows.
The way you would do real multi-tasking with Dos and Windows apps was
a) You needed to reconfigure your base memory setup with a 3rd party memory manager like QEMM (Doses EMM386 came later and wasn't good emough even when it did come out)
b) You used a better task switcher like Desqview
c) You ran a copy of windows inside of Desqview which ran your windows apps.
The whole thing was complex, slow and prone to problems. For example a lot of the modems had tiny buffers and used interupts so you either needed to give them like 80% of the CPU or downloads would always fail.
All that changed with OS/2.
The Dos window had something like 750k of ram even with the nut for the virtualized Dos so all Dos apps had plenty of room. Further the virtual screen on OS/2 was excellent so they didn't have to run full screen
In terms of windows apps you could run them in individual virtual environments (sort of a mini-windows just running the single app) or you could run them in one giant shared windows session.
So for example I ran Mathematica 1.3 which crashed all the time in its own windows session so when it crashed it didn't bring the whole environemtnd down. All the other windows apps ran in a shared session (which reduced the amount of memory they needed). I'd could also run one or two Dos boxes. Because the dos apps weren't in the same memory space as the windows apps they didn't make windows unstable.
Since terminals were native OS/2 apps they never failed and downloads were a breeze.
All this sounds very natural today. I mean after all we all use networking and run a zillion apps. But the Windows 3.0 world was nothing like this.
Pretty much OS/2 2.1 is somewhere in between NT 4.0 and Windows 2000.
At one CeBIT show a several years ago, they showed an OS/2 running (in SMP mode, even!) on a dual CPU PowerPC box.
I think OS/2 died because their disk cache was so horribly bad. It always was at least an order of magnitude slower than the Linux one. Oh, and I have no idea why they smoked when they named their file system "HP"FS. High performance is about the last thing I would associate with HPFS.
But I was a geek, I would have tried to use it anyway, but my S3 graphics card (which was THE standard graphics chipset) did not work with their driver.
And don't believe anyone who tells you their internals were beautiful. An operating system where a 2d graphics driver (without video acceleration, even!) is over one Meg in size can't be beautiful internally. I once wrote a driver based 2d library for DOS any my S3 driver had about 1000 bytes. That's three orders of magnitude less!
No, OS/2 has always sucked. Good riddance.
At that time you either had SCSI or you had some proprietary bullshit. Just look in the Linux kernel, they still have all the drivers in it. Aztech CD-ROM, Sony CD-ROM, the whole enchilada.
;-}
At that time, I had a SCSI CD-ROM on my Pro Audio Spectrum because I couldn't afford a real SCSI controller. Those were the times...
Thats assuming of course that IA64 even takes off.
So far it's looking like it won't be priced for the consumer market and can't be considering the huge die size used to provide room for the massive amount of transistors needed to even get it to preform on par with X86.
And that's in native mode of course I don't imagine emulated is anywhere near as fast. Can you remember why the PPro flopped? That's right it wasn't as fast for 16 bit code still being used in many apps and a certain consumer OS as the time. I don't imagine anything that runs 32 bit code slower than the current 32 bit CPUs will do well at all.
If anyone pulls it off it will be AMD with the Opteron whoes demo systems offered a 30% speed advantage over Athlons running at the same clock speed.
And that of course will pull all of the backward compatabillity crud with it for another generation of processors.
I don't see this changing until everyone is running an OS that allows apps to be ported between arches with a simple recompile. Unfortunatly I have my doubts about that happening in time to save the Itanic.
If companies like Adobe went public with the sort of thing in a meaningful way (like a small C program to prove their point) it would force companies like IBM to fix the problem and not blame the developer. This little factoid should have been on the Adobe BBS or Compuserve channel (or whatever you were using then) including the small C code. It would have been good for Adobe and good for IBM.
That wasn't true for all the lines. I bought an Ambra 60 mhz Pentium I (first generation so definitely in the 486 days) and OS/2 was not an option. Heck they wouldn't even guarantee OS/2 drivers for all installed hardware. My guess is that it was true for the PS/2 line; but wasn't true for the Ambra or .
I don't see this changing until everyone is running an OS that allows apps to be ported between arches with a simple recompile.
That would be one of the fine open source operating systems around then. Well, you can always dream...
I thought they went with Z-OS.
Anyway I'm going to ask you an off topic question since you might know the answer. Why did IBM change all these names?
Risc/6000 ~ AIX (now xSeries)
AS/400 ~ OS/400 (now iSeries)
S/390 ~ MVS (now zSeries)
all had clear brand recognition and a good reputation. What was IBM hoping for in their name change?
Compared to the other mainstream alternatives available at the time (DOS, Windows 1 - 3 and 95, MacOS) OS/2 was great. Compared to BeOS or some of the Unix clones available today, it is nothing special. It all depends on your point of reference.
" I'm kinda sceptic about the performance in "demo systems" vs. performance in real systems. Remember Intels claims for how much MMX would speed just about everything up?"
In this case the demo systems were 800mhz and handed to a third party(I forget if it was anandtech or tom's h/w though). Not sure what that will come out to in real life
"That would be one of the fine open source operating systems around then. Well, you can always dream"
Yes your correct but we still have a few years before any of them can take over the mainstream market. Personally I would prefer it.
I might be wrong - IBM is still pushing DB/2 hard, even to open source hosting facilities and even by killing PostgreSQL installations. But is this what IBM tried with OS/2 before? It didn't safe OS/2 and that's why I think that DB/2 will be next.
Less is more !
Hey IBM if your listening, OPEN SOURCE OS/2.
;)
That's a great way to stab you know who in the back.
-GG
I too had to hunt down drivers for my cdrom, but I never had any "reinstall without concent".
The other thing is that the poster may have done an "express install", which does reformat c:. This is stated in the installation guide.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Which was a horribly stupid decision. Search for printing related patents owned by Microsoft at that time; MS had a far better printer system, and they made a lot of money licensing it out to other companies...but NT shipped with the stupid OS/2 printer subsystem for political reasons.
OS/2 is still used in some places. My bank still has it installed on every desktop in their branch.
It has been freed.
If that's the case, I should change mine to "You think its bad being behind me?" (born and rasied NJ driver)
Intelligent Life on Earth
But in general, yes I think that Palm makes PDAs is the biggest disadvantage in using it for 3rd party vendors.
Sony certainly isn't afraid of Palm
Why should they? They forked down a good chunk of change to own some portion of Palm's OS developement side.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I have yet to see an ATM machine running any type of Linux install.
:)
That's because you haven't looked here .
At least if the code to an open source project goes missing, you can be sure that nobody found it interesting or useful.
Or, the person running the site that hosted it stops paying his ISP bill, and no one had bothered to mirror it.
That is why you can't find the Unix Midi Plugin anymore (I've tried numerous times - all 404s and invalid domains). So you can't listen to midis embedded in webpages under any non-proprietary OS.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
It has a small footprint and hardware watchdog timer support, what else do you need really?
Umm how about stability?
After the Linux 2.4.20 DATA CORRUPTION fiasco, in a "STABLE" kernel, I'm not feeling too good about that idea...
There still isn't a Linux 2.4.21 out yet, nor any warnings on the kernel sites.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Then Eric replied with a very short, but interesting point - the only problem would be any legal ramifications (read: patent).
Remember, Microsoft actually had a hand in OS/2's development - and accordingly, some of that code is theirs. We all know that Microsoft considers open source evil in general, but what if part of their work was opened despite their wishes?
As much as my wife and I like OS/2, open sourcing it would be IBM shooting themselves in the foot. No, I hate patents, and I'd love to see this happen, but if they did this it would be a few years, and it may not be worth the effort financially.
This sig no verb.
My regretful and theoretical reply to an early question as to why they don't is here.
This sig no verb.
That's very true.
Here in Melbourne, Australia, at my local shopping centre, I noted that most of the ATMs run OS/2 the last time there was a power outage.
--jquirke
No matter how dead os/2 may seem to be I bet you in 10-20 years someone somewhere will still be using it for something.
Likewise with MacOS System 6 and 7. I just acquired a dirty old Mac LC, one of the one with a crippled PMMU that wont run NetBSD or Linux. As a result of this shortcoming I was forced to try System 6 or 7 of MacOS, and in the process discovered a large community of people using a ten year "out of date" OS.
Chris
My point was that if an sizable number of people are using it, someone is going to still have the source. It may take some searching, but you are going to find it. It might not even be in a public location any more, but if someone has it, you probably can get it, and find someone else to re-host it. If not, then it must not have been the good or useful.
Why is IBM so infatuated with the number 2? PS/2, OS/2, DB2?? What gives? Self-fulfilling prophecy I guess.....
Warp 4 did appear on the cover of APC Magazine about a year ago. Full thing, no time lock or anything. Netscape 4.04 was there, but the service pack it needed wasn't.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.