Slashdot Mirror
IBM Officially Kills OS/2
boarder8925 writes "'Big Blue has hammered the final nails into OS/2's coffin. It said that all sales of OS/2 will end on the 23rd of December this year, and support for the pre-emptive multitasking operating system will end on the 31st December 2006.' IBM has posted a migration page to help OS/2 users easily switch to Linux."
Only fair don't you think?
OS/2 is still around? Thats news to me! I guess I'm not a real geek, but that last time I heard anyone used that operating system was in 1995.
I loved OS/2 back in its day! I first grew to hate Microsoft as I watched them try to kill it with "Chicago" vaporware and FUD.
I wonder how the 850M MS just paid IBM over it compares to the damage MS really did.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on Slashdot.
If they won't support it, why not open the source and release it as such?
IBM has posted a migration page to help OS/2 users easily switch to Linux.
Sounds like Windows will have competition on an even wider base.
Any cost predictions for such a wide migration? OS/2 is on a fairly wide range of ATMs as it is.
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
So, OS/2. May you rest in peace. And please stop scratching the coffin from the inside. It upsets the bereaved :: wipes a tear from eye ::
Ahh hah hah hah!
What I really find interesting is that IBM has offered a migration HOWTO for the OS users, and its to Linux. Always nice to have the big boy support.
My Thoughts, Kyndig
thats downgrading.
I've never used it (maybe it deserves to die) but I'm surprised IBM didn't spin-off OS/2 sales & support as a little services company (with an appropriate slice of the proceeds of the service contracts). If people want to use OS/2, why not sell it to them? If people need support for it, why not sell it to them?
I could understand a company killing a product that competes with its own more modern systems, but how do continued OS/2 sales hurt IBM more than orphaning some existing customers?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
OS2's loss is linux's gain. Is anyone really suprised with this? I think we have all seen this coming for quite some time, and it was more a matter of "when" than "if".
Voice your opinion!
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
OS/2 never had a chance, specifically because it came from IBM. No way in hell were the other major OEM's going to feed their biggest competitor by buying the OS from IBM.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Correct. OS/2 is a 32 bit OS, where 3.1 is not. However, OS/2 is also capable of running all windows 16 bit applications. Which is more then I can say for the new Windows.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
"Secondly, it was supposed to be compatible with DOS and FAT16. In practice, it could write things to a FAT16 partition across a LAN on a DOS/Win machine that could not be read by DOS/Win and caused automated back-ups to fail and require someone to spend sixteen hours watching the machine to hit buttons and tell the backup software to ignore the problem. It behaved like an infertile virus that happened to double as an OS."
Blame that on Windows! You don't really think that OS2 can have raw access to the disks by lan, do you? Even if it can, double blame on Windows, because it shouldn't. Ok, you come with several non issues and a bug of Windows, a lot of reasons to hate OS2... Saying that it isn't a troll dont make it so.
Rethinking email
Learned a decent amount about OS internals. Certainly led me and others down "enlightened paths" later in life (from an OS PoV).
getting verklempt ...
Knew ye well, OS/2. Rest in Peace.
I never had any problems with OS/2 drivers at all. I was running it on a 486SX-25mhz with 8mb of RAM with Waffle BBS answering a modem in a DOS VDM, while I ran Win3.1 apps. It was an incredible OS, and to this very day, even the latest, greatest Windows GUI is still just a fancied-up version of the original Chicago shell, which was a retarded rip-off of WPS. I have a feeling that a good many of the OS/2 users end up either going to Linux or MacOS.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Nah, I have a copy of OS/2 at home, but I can't get it to work or even install on any of the PCs I have. The thing is just too bloody outdated. All the effort that would be required to get it to work, then fixing all the security holes that are bound to be there, would be much better spent developing another OS, IMO.
It's a shame OS/2 didn't beat the technologically inferior Windows 9x series. But on the other hand, a world in which it did would probably be a world in which IBM _and_ Microsoft dominated the OS market together. Thinking about it that way makes me prefer the way things happened in this world.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Are you kidding? What about OS/390/VMS and all the mainframe predecessors? The government actually sued them over being a monopoly, remember? Of course they were successful. For a while they enjoyed quite a UNIX marketshare with AIX (RS/6000) also. Not to forget the mini-computer market: the AS/400 was extremely successful, and there are still many installations of that now that run small businesses.
It's a wonder it took so long to die. It found its way into ATMs though, the newer ones use Windows and its obvious since they so unresponsive.
OS/2 just showed that to take on Microsoft you have to have a strategy that deals with the dirty tricks they're likely to pull on you.
Actually OS2 didn't look like 95 as OS2 2.0 came out before 95 was even developed heck OS2 2.0 looking like 95 as you put it came out before windows NT which was Pre 95. It's been a while but i belive OS2 came out in 90, 91 several years before 95 and a couple years before NT.
Not only that but IBM and MS had worked together on OS2 1.0 which came out in the 80's (this was before I got into IBM PC's i had dabbled with apple 2 in school but got into pc's in the late 80's so i didn't pay attention to IBM or MS didn't even know MS existed back then) but had broken up before 2.0 came out at the time MS was working on OS2 code which it shelved after the breakup and later dusted off after OS2 2.0 came out (one of the things OS2 2.0 and later had inside it was windows 3.0 and later 3.1 code because of an agreement between MS and IBM before they broke up for compatabilty with windows apps you could even make the desktop look like windows 3.0 and 3.1 or launch the 3.x shell ontop of OS2 which is where i think you are getting the it looked like 3.11 with 95 extentions they weren't 95 extentions they were 3.1 extentions) and finished it off calling it Windows NT. And later a hacked job using old dos for the 9x versions which were buggier than OS2 ever was mainly because of the fact the 9x versions were using Dos at their core.
So to be fair windows looks like OS2 but wasn't as stable as OS2 but OS2 wasn't as stable as NT nor as fast as OS2 itself had Dos in it as well just not to the degree of windows 9x. It also was more flexible and able to do more at once than any 9x OS mainly because it was pre-emptive instead of being co-operative like all windows OS's are including NT, 2000 and XP. Though NT doesn't have the weakness of dos draging it down so it's still a better OS. As for 2000 being fast of course it is it was written at a later time with different code and programing for faster machines with more memory so of course 2000 is more optimised and faster and 2003 is easier to configure for the same reasons they were both written a decade later more in the case of 2003. Though the dificulty configuring is the same problem with linux and linux code is more recent than OS2 code so thats a pretty lame argument. But your right it is to old now for a OS let alone for a server. Back when OS2 1.0 came out i heard it was crap but when 2.0 came out it was a much better OS than windows 3.0 was and much more stable and a better OS didn't come along til MS got NT out and the bugs in that worked out so at the time OS2 was much better than anything else out their for an OS on the PC. But time and IBM's lack of keeping up on it along with the fact that most people just didn't know what OS2 was to begin with (which was all IBM's fault) pretty much doomed it.
IBM was dooming it from the start anyway so it's not really like a suprise anyway. If they hadn't doomed it and had handled it right from the start it would be OS2 that 90 some percent of all pc's would be using today not windows. Take that for whatever it's worth but 95 suffered most of the same problems OS2 2.0 did almost 5 years after OS2 did and had fixed them so most people in 95 could have avoided things like corupt registries and other 95 problems by using OS2 2.1 which was out by that time. But IBM couldn't get it's head on straight and didn't relise what they had till it was way to late to do themselves any good. Heck they hadn't relised what they had for some time after 95 came out and by the time they did it was all over and everybody had gone home years before thats how far out of touch IBM was.
Coward? Coward! Thems fighten words!!
Why won't IBM release OS/2 into the wild as Open Source? It is (was) a great Operating System.
Goodbye OS/2,
I will miss you,
Goodbye to your cousin NT 4.0 too,
Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
OS/2 was out for EIGHT YEARS before Windows 95. The 32-bit OS/2 was out THREE years before Windows 95 and a year before Windows NT 3.1. OS/2 Warp version 3 (which you are probably thinking of) was out a year before Windows 95.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I tried to get OS/2 running on three separate systems.
On one, the hard disk driver didn't work.
On the second, the video driver didn't work, so you were stuck at 640x480.
On the third, it wouldn't boot.
So the company I was working for gave up on OS/2. And now I work for IBM...
OS/2's problem wasn't marketing. The problem was that it wouldn't run on the diverse array of hardware around. It was probably great if you had IBM PCs, but who did?
Microsoft spends a lot of money getting Windows to run on all the hardware out there. Even if Apple wanted to make OS X run on any PC, they probably couldn't afford to.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak