IBM's OS/2 Strategy for 2003

RIP by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-10 01:14 · Score: 4, Insightful

Funny that an OS which /. has been reporting as being dead for years is apparently still being updated.

-t

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?

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

Re:Getting OS/2 by EvilAlien · 2003-01-10 02:41 · Score: 3, Informative

Banks. Banks love the hot n spicy OS/2 action.
There was a really interesting article on the OS that I read a few months ago... I can't find the damn URL, but if you do a google search you will find quite a few resources with information on OS/2. It is apparently still quite popular with banks (mostly due to having existing infrastructure that relies on it paired with good ol' inertia).

--
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
Re:Getting OS/2 by Dr.+Evil · 2003-01-10 03:01 · Score: 5, Informative
I don't use it, but I ran it for quite some time.
Most GNU and free software apps have been ported to it at one time or another. GCC, Xfree86, Mozilla, all were ported long before they were ported to Win32.
It still has a heap of useful software apps, and it has some things which Linux has been working on since at least 1995.
Like:
- Smooth True Type font integration and management
- Easy printer setup and support
- Support for multiple simultaneous streams of audio (without the lag of ESD, or kludging about with multiple audio devices presented by one card)
- Win16 application support (who cares if it doesn't fully or even partially support Win32, neither does Linux)
- A desktop environment with a good clipboard
It lacked:
- A slick security model on the filesystem
- Multiuser support
- Good marketing and incentive for companies to develop native apps.
The GUI also had a message queueing problem which prevented apps from responding when one app seized the queue.
In the late days of BBSes, OS/2 was the prefered platform. You could strip out the GUI and the multitasking was very good. Desqview was the only competitor in that field, Linux was too new and strange for the BBS world -- BBSes were a PC phenomenon. Unix and variants were part of an educational and business world which didn't cross into the PC world.
IBM never released the package for free (short of betas back in the early '90s), and now I believe it costs a fortune to get a copy... if you can get it at all.
Re:Getting OS/2 by revision1_1 · 2003-01-10 03:12 · Score: 3, Informative

ATM machines, specifically. I worked in the marketing group for a small tech-savvy bank once, and was given the task of customizing our (single) ATM's 'demo loop'.

You had to have an OS/2 machine loaded with the ATM software (am emulator, essentially), change the graphics/text/animation and so forth in the emu, and then create a boot floppy.

You rebooted the ATM with the boot floppy, and voila! New interface!

As soon as I told my boss I was going to need a machine running OS/2 and the ATM emulator software (which we couldn't locate anyway) his response was "uh, nevermind."

I wish I still had those docs. It was interesting stuff: what was logged, and where, how to hook up the cash counter to the (serial, IIRC) port, etc. Neat stuff. The ATM innards were by Fujitsu, if memory serves.
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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Buy Text Processing in Python
Re:Getting OS/2 by Micah · 2003-01-10 07:20 · Score: 4, Insightful

I have a copy of Warp 4 and Visual Age C++ for OS/2 that I'll almost certainly never use again. Would be willing to sell for cheap+shipping.

I loved OS/2, but it is what helped convince me that Free Software is SO important. I put quite a bit of effort into learning OS/2, hoping it would take off, and learned a lesson when IBM stopped pushing it. You just can't put much hope in non Free software! Linux is, fortunately, immune to being ignored by its manufacturer the way OS/2 (and BeOS) was.

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:Change of plans.. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-10 01:23 · Score: 3, Informative

Well, for one thing, many companies (like Musicland, which owns Sam Goody, Suncoast, and other music stores) use OS/2 to manage their individual stores. I worked temp at a Sam Goody, and was surprised to find the graphical OS/2 interface hidden behind some dumb text-based check-out program. Worked pretty well, too. I don't believe it ever crashed within the time I was there, unlike the Windows machine (for searching their music database) which really sucked.
Re:Change of plans.. by silvaran · 2003-01-10 01:35 · Score: 5, Informative

It was corrected on a slashback. The EOLs are mostly for hardcopy documentation and other bundled software, not for OS/2 itself.

Re:who honestly cares by Max+Romantschuk · 2003-01-10 01:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

Then again... For IBM keeping it's customers happy is the most important thing of all. Regardless of if that means supporting OS/2 or any other legacy platform.

Beta was better technology, but somehow we all got stuck with VHS... Superior technology can't always win.

Granted, OS/2 is a different story. But in both cases it's about earning ones salary... which is always done by keeping the customers happy.

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.: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/

Re:So why use OS/2? by squiggleslash · 2003-01-10 01:44 · Score: 5, Insightful

Maybe they just like it better. You know, the way it works. The GUI. etc.

Where did this crap come in choice is a bad thing? EVERY time someone mentions a new OS, or in this case a resuccitated old one, the same old "Why do this, when Linux does blah blah blah and Windows does narf narf narf" arguments come up.

Notice how nobody ever protests when GM or Ford comes up with another car. "But why get this 'Grand Marquis' thing when a Sable can already get you from A to B in comfort."

But choice in OSes. Oh no, that's terrible! We must consider that evil!

--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.

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.

Zope, Mailman, Apache/2, PHP-Nuke, Rsyncd by tsikora · 2003-01-10 02:10 · Score: 5, Informative

and Sendmail all on OS/2 Warp Server for e-Business and every bit as solid as Linux.. and faster. 32-bit BSD TCP/IP stack, et.all The UnixOS/2 Development team has been making OS/2 a world-class server entry.

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-- Ted tsikora@powerusersbbs.com

Re:who honestly cares by reallocate · 2003-01-10 02:16 · Score: 3, Insightful

>> No one has really used OS/2 since 1995...the install (sic) base...

You contradict yourself.

>> ...negating a reason for OS/2 to even exist.
Operating systems aren't academic exercises. Capabilities that you won't use waste your money, no matter how "modern" the OS. Presumably, institutions with an investment in OS/2 think it makes good business sense to stay with it.

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-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"

Re:who honestly cares by IamTheRealMike · 2003-01-10 02:18 · Score: 3, Insightful

No one has really used OS/2 since 1995.

Actually, it runs large numbers of ATM machines. Strange but true.

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:I save big bucks with OS/2 by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-10 07:21 · Score: 3, Informative

Yes, architecture as in buildings. Autocad is not the only program that can write a DWG or DXF file, Just as MS word is not the only program that can write a DOC file. AutoCAD is also not the best CAD program on the planet, although Autodesk would like you to think so. There are decent alternatives, although no good free (GPL) ones.

I am no more a fan of Autodesk than I am Microsoft, because these companies have created market conditions that limit both choice to consumers and technical innovation in software.

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.

--

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

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:Zope, Mailman, Apache/2, PHP-Nuke, Rsyncd by Listen+Up · 2003-01-10 05:38 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

TROLL 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. As a matter of fact, the OS/2 SMP model was one of the best models ever created and to this day is an example of how proper SMP should be done. OS/2 also ran services the same as Unix did, although with a slightly different model. Didn't know how to use REXX, eh? I used to work for a company (Lands End in USA) that used OS/2 for three 800 person 24-hour call centers and almost never was there a problem with OS/2. And when there was, it never stopped business. It chugged along like a tank. For even larger settings, you would combine OS/2 and an AS/400 or S/390 and have an unbeatable combination. The GUI was single threaded in the end (although extremely powerful), but command line OS/2 was as much Unix like as you could want and with all of the power you could handle. I could talk about OS/2 for hours, but the fact is is that you a an idiot troll, and if you knew anything about OS/2 Server and OS/2 Advanced Server you would realize how much of an idiot you look like.

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.

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