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IBM's OS/2 Strategy for 2003
Landreth writes "OS2World.com reports that IBM has released their OS/2 strategy for 2003. They appear to be pushing the WebSphere Software Platform as well as client and server upgrades to Warp 4. The report can be viewed at IBM's website."
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...
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I mean, they even have OS/2 Mozilla - at least they weren't told their systems were out of date and force them to upgrade every 18 months.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).
I thought IBM's OS/2 plan for 2003 was kill it. Why has this changed?
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.
.: Max Romantschuk
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.
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.
-- Ted tsikora@powerusersbbs.com
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
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.