IBM's OS/2 Strategy for 2003

Getting OS/2 by bjb · 2003-01-10 01:16 · Score: 5, Interesting

I've been wondering for the last few years, who still uses OS/2? Forget companies who have legacy software running on it, I mean does anyone actually use it on their personal machine? I mean regularly; enough to validate upgrades.

The bigger question I have, however, is that I never really had a chance to play with OS/2, and I always wanted to see what it was like. Is it even publically (preferably freely) available for a weekend hobbyist like myself who just wants to kick the tires?

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Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...

Re:Getting OS/2 by Lulu+of+the+Lotus-Ea · 2003-01-10 07:18 · Score: 3, Interesting

Well... I use OS/2 every day on my main machine (including as I post). It is not perfect, and I sometimes wish some new functionality was available, but no one has ported it (or written an OS2-specific variant). But for the work I actually do day-to-day, this system is better than any other options.

Of course, the WPS (workplace shell) is an object oriented interface that is FAR better than that on any other platform (including BeOS, Gnome, KDE, Windows, MacOS9/X, etc). But nonetheless, most of what I actually do is within specific applications, and an platform that lets me reasonably switch between apps is bearable. I have a set of applications that I am quite happy with, and in many cases simply have not found anything on Linux/FreeBSD, or MacOS X (or "minor" platforms either) that I am entirely comfortable using. Windows, of course, is not under serious consideration for full time use.

Part of my happiness with current apps is inertia. I'm familiar with certain applications, and want to avoid a learning curve. But in many cases, I've really TRIED to find something as good elsewhere, and simiply have not been satisfied. Here are the main things I use:

- Yarn Mail/Newsreader: I like this app. It is easy to navigate, unifies mail and news, is text mode/keyboard driven, is extensible with outside tools. Admittedly, I know the mutt--and perhaps some other *nix tools--would be as good, so this is mostly a matter of familiarity.

- Mozilla: Available most everywhere, but this includes my OS/2 box.

- Python: Available most everywhere too, including OS/2.

- Boxer editor: I have used this editor for years, and really like it. I like the ancient OS/2 version better than the new Windows versions even (text mode, for one thing). This is an area where I am dramatically unhappy with my options elsewhere. Toys like joe, or even jed, just don't do enough. But vi and emacs are just way too steep a learning curve for me to really use (even though I know every capability is hidden in there somewhere). Jedit is OK for my iBook, but a bit slow. Nedit is bearable too, but canot be used in a console, which is what I really want. Boxer has menus that actually *show* you what it can do (with shortcut hints in the menus), and Boxer actually handles wrapped text in flexible ways, unlike almost every other editor (changing margin, text widths, hanging indents, etc., all per paragraph). Lots of editors work for code... few are usuable for writing books and articles like I do.

- Good command line. You need to enhance OS/2's shell to make it fully usable. But I use a REXX script called 'cmdshl' that adds the needed colorization, tab completion, history, etc. I could also get bash or others if I wanted. (The default CMD.EXE is better than Windows, but not as good as I want).

- Ghostscript/Ghostview: Up to date on these, most platforms are fine too... but I'm OK with OS/2 here.

- Occassionally I run old, but still good, Win16 commercial tools, mostly WordPerfect 7, and Quattro Pro. Mostly I like these better than OpenOffice equivalents (if only because of my legacy documents). But OpenOffice I could live with (when will the OSX version be available?!).

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Re:who honestly cares by reaper20 · 2003-01-10 01:19 · Score: 5, Interesting

On the otherhand if I was a past OS/2 customer I would be pretty happy with the length of support by IBM so far. You gotta hand it to IBM on this one, they supported the product as long as the customers needed, and that's pretty rare in this day and age of forced upgrades.

I mean, they even have OS/2 Mozilla - at least they weren't told their systems were out of date and force them to upgrade every 18 months. (Oracle/Microsoft).

Change of plans.. by Plutor · 2003-01-10 01:19 · Score: 5, Interesting

I thought IBM's OS/2 plan for 2003 was kill it. Why has this changed?

Re:web platform by Inflatable+Hippo · 2003-01-10 01:43 · Score: 2, Interesting

Considering the first point:

> What does the /. community think of the growing move toward the web platform.

I'm not sure what a true "web platform" really is. If you were to design the thinnest possible platform that supported "reasonable" quality browsing and not much more, what would it be, and how small?

So far the best attempts I've seen have been built on heavily pruned Linux, just enough to run Mozilla or Opera. But that's still fairly fat, a side effect of being a modular OS that's capable of so much more.

I'm still waiting for a descent "web platform" that fits on a floppy or two, I'm confident it could be done though, given a fixed hardware platform.

No doubt there are several /. ers out there who wrote one just last week :-)

Re:who honestly cares by WPIDalamar · 2003-01-10 01:55 · Score: 3, Interesting

Last company I worked for actually ran a Lotus Notes server on it until just before I left. It worked great, never required maintenance or upgrades, and supported all the features we needed.

What if IBM Open Sourced OS/2? by bluelarva · 2003-01-10 02:06 · Score: 3, Interesting

I wonder if there is any chance that IBM can perhaps open source OS/2 or at least part. I thought OS/2 had a great object oriented multithreaded GUI considering it ran on a pidly 486. I know open sourcing it won't bring it back from the dead but I think it could be interesting if some of that code can be adopted to Linux. It's very unlikely IBM lawyers would let such a thing happen but it's something to daydream about just for fun.

Re:What if IBM Open Sourced OS/2? by Micah · 2003-01-10 07:29 · Score: 3, Interesting

Actually I believe the vast majority of MS code has been removed -- maybe a bit left in the 16-bit subsystem or HPFS filesystem. But now we have the JFS filesystem and don't really need 16 bit support.

Re:who honestly cares - apparently you by pigfukr · 2003-01-10 02:19 · Score: 4, Interesting

Apparently you, since you did make it a point to read the responses to the posting and post one yourself.

I am using OS/2 right now, the only thing I reboot to windows for is gaming. I am using the version of OS/2 that was released in 2002. As "obsolete" as you think it is, it is still a far better desktop OS than Linux. Linux is not ready to "take over the world" at all in that aspect.

OS/2 is still a fun OS to dink around with. If the linux open source community comes up with any nice software it's only a short time before the OS/2 guys port it over. We have almost everything that Linux has due to the simplicity of porting linux-->OS/2.

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pigfukr

I save big bucks with OS/2 by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-10 02:45 · Score: 5, Interesting

all the desktops in my architecture practice run OS/2, the servers run linux, and we have one copy of windows running on VMWare. I set up the os/2 boxes when warp connect appeared on the scene, ('93?) and have never looked back. Other than updating Os/2 to warp 4 our software upgrade costs have been virtually zero. They are zero because we don't run windows programs. We are never forced into an upgrade situation.We use a mix of DOS (oh the horror!) OS/2 and linux GPL programs.The last versions of many DOS programs before the big switch to windows (word perfect, quattro pro, generic cadd etc) were really very good pieces of work. OS/2 allows perfectly stable multitasking of these programs.

We use HOBlink to add an X server to the OS/2 desktop, and now we can also use OS/2 as a thin client for various Linux programs.

Nothing crashes. we don't get viruses, nobody is playing games when they should be working, and picking up additional copies of programs we need is trivial on e-bay.

That being said, our backup plan is to migrate totaly to Linux if OS/2 ever really dies. The only thing keeping us from doing that now, is lack of a good Reasonably inexpensive CAD program that runs on Linux.

We are just going to skip the whole windows think

Re:Wait... by keyslammer · 2003-01-10 02:49 · Score: 2, Interesting

I didn't even think IBM used OS/2

They don't. Or at least all of the IBM sites that I have worked for have switched to either Windows or Linux.

I've been trying to figure out IBM's position on OS/2 for years now, and I don't think that they have one, at least not at the corporate level. There are just so many organizations within IBM that "OS/2 strategy" has a different meaning depending on who you talk to.

Re:who honestly cares - apparently you by Greyfox · 2003-01-10 02:54 · Score: 4, Interesting

Gnome's archetecture is very similar to the OS/2 workplace shell. The main advantage of the workplace shell over gnome right now are all the SOM objects that are implemented on it. OS/2's desktop is its greatest strength but also its greatest weakness -- it's very easy to corrupt (Some days it seemed like all you had to do was look at it funny) and then you'd lose all your object relationships that all your apps carefully installed.

It'd be interesting to implement clones of the OS/2 workplace objects for Gnome. I'm kind of surprised that someone hasn't. Personally though, I don't like icons on my desktop so I remove the file manager functionality from Gnome, and a lot of those objects only really make sense on the desktop.

When I was working on-site support, we had a very specific order in which you HAD to install the various OS/2 and Windows applications that the company needed on each desktop. If you didn't follow that order, you'd end up trashing something (usually the workplace shell) and having to start from scratch. Of course, my primary interaction with OS/2 was when someone was having a problem with it.

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I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

I still use OS/2. by Richard+Steiner · 2003-01-10 03:06 · Score: 2, Interesting

Here are some of the reasons why:

Warp 4 Screen Shots>

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Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.

Re:Zope, Mailman, Apache/2, PHP-Nuke, Rsyncd by keyslammer · 2003-01-10 03:23 · Score: 2, Interesting

I'm sorry, but OS/2 has never been and will never be a "world-class server entry". It's not multiuser, doesn't scale onto multiprocessor boxes, requires reboots after software installs/upgrades, relies too heavily on the desktop for administration, and just generally isn't stable enough for the corporate server.

The shop I last worked at had to use OS/2 as a server platform in a number of cases. These machines needed regular attention. We had to set up hacks to do things like restart critical services when they went belly-up for no known reason. If a client came to me suggesting that OS/2 be used for a 100 system server farm, I'd probably laugh in their face (and then agree to help at a significantly higher rate :-).

Vendor support by jdfox · 2003-01-10 04:02 · Score: 3, Interesting

When OS/2 Warp came out, I tried it and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was, although my colleagues all sneered at its huge RAM requirement of 16MB.
What killed it for me was 3rd party support. For instance, I phoned up Epson to enquire whether they planned to produce OS/2 drivers, and got the following reply:

Epson: "What version of Windows is this product running on Sir?"
Me: "Well actually, it's a different operating system from Windows. It's from IBM, and it's called OS/2. I was wondering if you were planning to provide printer drivers for this new OS?"
Epson: (long-suffering sigh) "Yes, SIR, but what version of Windows will you be running the product on?"

And of course I couldn't write a driver myself, unless I signed up as a developer etc. etc. No point in re-hashing all that history I guess.

Re:Vendor support by SoloLobo · 2003-01-10 10:21 · Score: 2, Interesting

Wow, talk about exposing one of my healed raw nerves.

I too bought Warp4 with great expectations. I convinced my boss to spring for a new Dell w/ 16Meg RAM and I believe a 1Gig HDD. I installed the new OS with very little difficulty and was ready to rock. Then I opened a spreadsheet and the cursor was off by a mile!

I called the video card manufacture (Number 9, where are they now?) to ask if they had drivers for Warp rather than 2.11 (one of the major changes to OS/2 from 2.11 to Warp 4 was the video subsystem). After the guy finished laughing at me he sneered " when they sell more than 3 copies of that crap we might think about it" and hung up on me.

I also got a nearly identical response from the developer of SPSS. While they were heavily advertising their new version for NT3.5!

OS/2 History Link by datastew · 2003-01-10 04:55 · Score: 2, Interesting

For those of you looking for a history of OS/2 and its marketing, try this article.

Re:Zope, Mailman, Apache/2, PHP-Nuke, Rsyncd by benzapp · 2003-01-10 05:51 · Score: 4, Interesting

Sheesh, the OS/2 GUI was great but not necessary. I ran a multinode BBS for years command line only. Especially in 1993 when 8 megs of ram cost some serious cash, using 2-3 megs for the GUI was unnecessary. Its funny you profess such knowledge because OS/2 had few GUI tools for administration. Almost all were command line and cable of being manipulated via REXX scripts. There were some GUI front ends, but most sucked and no one used them. As for the reboots, only Ring 0 drivers required a reboot, like Installable File System drivers. But, even Linux requires that. Oh wait, you need to recompile the kernel to that. *duh*

OS/2 SMP has always supported up to 1024 processors , and still is one of the best examples of multiprocessing today, better than Windows and Linux. You forget that IBM practically invented multiprocessing and in the early 90's with the slow advancement of CISC processors it really seemed like multiprocessing was the way for performance gains. I remember going to Comdex in 1994 seeing OS/2 2.1 SMP running on 128 processors. They ran this great image editing tool called Colorworks which was highly SMP enabled, the performance gains were amazing. Today however, the only amazing multiprocessing machines are IBM Power4 machines. Everything else is a toy. 2, 4 processors. BFD

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I don't read or respond to AC posts

Re:OS/2 on the 286 by iggymanz · 2003-01-10 07:13 · Score: 3, Interesting

Coherent (a Unix-like operating system) by Mark Williams Company also supported it. You do know how 286 switches from protected back to real for kernel services? The processor itself couldn't do it, so there was a fun trick with the help of the keyboard controller.

I used to run Coherent on my 10 MHz Capital E 80286 from Elek-Tek. It had 1MB of RAM and a 40MB Seagate ST251-1. Both 1.2MB 5-1/4" and 720K 3-1/2" floppies. 2400 baud Zoom modem. And Super EGA.

Re:Zope, Mailman, Apache/2, PHP-Nuke, Rsyncd by keyslammer · 2003-01-10 07:14 · Score: 2, Interesting

What a bunch of total crap. OS/2 was SMP enabled from 2.11 (or 2.1 I believe) and scaled almost flawlessly linear as the number of processors grew.

I have to back down on this one. As it turns out there are SMP enabled versions of OS/2. But this in turn brings up the question of what are we talking about? Standard OS/2 or OS/2 server? Because there's a huge price difference between the two.

Didn't know how to use REXX, eh?

I started using REXX in 1990 and it was my primary scripting language until I discovered real scripting
languages.

command line OS/2 was as much Unix like as you could want

OS/2's command line is no more powerful than the DOS command line. It pales in comparison to the UNIX shell, which is why several companies released enhanced shells for for OS/2.

used OS/2 for three 800 person 24-hour call centers

I developed for OS/2 over the course of 12 years at a factory with hundreds of OS/2 workstations. The stability of later versions of the OS/2 kernel is impressive: I've seen the kernel keep chugging along after the desktop hangs on a number of occassions. But what good is that when other layers of the system are so confounded that the only thing that solves the problem is a reboot?

So best of luck in your advocacy of a dying OS (and in the improvement of your manners) but I stand by my statement: OS/2 is not a good server operating system.

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