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Is OS/2 Coming Back?
mstansberry writes "Is IBM considering relaunching OS/2? One source close to IBM says Big Blue plans to repurpose OS/2 services atop a Linux core. IT managers ask, why now?" Hey, back in simpler times OS/2 was super badass. Both of the guys who ran it were hard core.
I would be delighted to switch my window manager back to the Workplace Shell (well, provided that there were keyboard shortcuts). I would not be so delighted to again deal with the SIQ lockups (but I imagine a port of WPS to X11 wouldn't have that problem, except to the extent that its own components might themselves use their own queue). I also would worry about EA corruption, which was always a concern with OS/2 as the collection of cruft in EAs kept growing and often a little mistake led one to need to repair them (or reinstall the system).
Anyhow, point is if I could just have the interface back, with some light Unix sensibilities injected, I'd be happy to switch from WindowMaker back to WPS. (Actually, having Stardock's Object Desktop as part of that would be a huge plus).
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Although there are a lot of virtues in UNIX programming, some people just don't like it. They prefer richer APIs that Windows and OS/2 provide.
So with OS/2 aging, it makes sense for IBM to put the APIs onto a modern OS. App migration becomes a cinch, and the future of the system is guaranteed.
Does OS/2 have enough customers to make this porting effort worthwhile? I don't know.
I think I know one of them
This is just typical of IBM Services missing a delivery target.
The article is really an April 1st joke, but the 12th was the closest they could come. Probably need a few more contractor billable hours next time.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
People moan and whine because there's Gnome and KDE (although there's increasingly a bit of a norm unifying the whole thing thanks to opendesktop) and now they pull, out of all things, OS/2 services ?
Granted, why not ? But the few who actually worked on OS/2 programming let it go a long time ago. And why OS/2 and not [insert whatever other dead system here] ?
Everybody nowadays either uses Unix or Windows. Come up with something new or work with the crowd. Out with the IT necromancy I say. Bring out the torches and pitchforks !
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
You seem to miss the thousands of banks and financial institutions that were using it as well. OS/2 was far more prevalent in large businesses than it ever was with home users.
.technomancer
OS/2 is still running ATMs, train systems, all kinds of important things. It never went away.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Gnome and KDE are fine, but if IBM really wanted to, they could make them both obsolete pretty quickly with an update WPS interface. Plus, let's face it, at this stage in the "Linux on the desktop" battle, Linux *needs* an official, fully-funded commercial desktop environment. The Gnome vs. KDE battle is retarded, and both DEs are starting to get kind of nutty. IBM could restore sanity.
I'm all for it, personally. But I also think it's obvious that this is just a rumor.
They could port the OS/2 userspace APIs to linux. It would probably work pretty well. They could probably make it load and run OS/2 EXEs and DLLs unchanged. That would be cool.
(Spent some years of my life working on IBMs C++ compiler for OS/2.)
Ian Ameline
I used both OS/2 (Warp and earlier) as well as Amiga OS and the latter is a better choice to bring back. Probably easier too!
For a lot of companies, if something works there is no reason to mess with it. As hardware gets old and is difficult to replace with devices supported by OS/2, this may be attractive for some companies. In the past 12 months I have visited clients running critical applications on OS/2 and Xenix, while it is easy for an outsider to say "Just upgrade it to a newer application", replicating all the business logic and surrounding process would be costly and disruptive.
Finally, I've been dreaming for this day to come for years now. I've been using the PS/2 to USB adapter on my model M keyboard but it's adding unnecessary latency, not to mention USB's slow polling rate sucks. Now I can finally plug my keyboard into a native PS/2 port!
What? What do you mean TFA wasn't talking about the port?
I still have an unopened box of OS/2. Good times.
I also would worry about EA corruption
Did EA even make any games for OS/2?
The obvious question is why? And the answer is despite Windows' spanking, IBM shops still run quite a bit of OS/2 -- not that they've advertised that fact. In theory these companies can drop this Linux-OS/2 amalgam in to replace aging installations with minimal disruption.
I'm all for another alternative, but I really would like to know what part of OS/2 is running around in the wild. It's been like 10 years since I've heard that word: Nowadays is Windows, some distribution of Linux, or Snow Leopard. Finding a place in the middle of the Evil Giant, the Indie Guy, and the, er, cat, and most imporantly, a target audience might prove to be, well, impossible. How many distro of Linux are there anyway? Granted, I'm not really into Linux, but all I keep hearing is Ubuntu, Debian, and Red Hat. This could very well be the fate of OS/2 unless they realy find that target audience.
Oblivion Awaits
Can we have a new tag: "Rhetorical questions to which the answer is 'No'"
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
SOM programming was a pain in the ass: code an IDL, precompile and get C header file from Hell (it was akin to the first C++ precomilers that would implement everything in C), link, and then there was a binding operation - IIRC. For the WPS, you'd create a dll that would extend it - your application was really a dll that was run by the desktop. It did allow multi threading BUT it was all in the same address space meaning, a bad app took out the whole desktop.
In a nutshell, GNOME and KDE is better than what IBM had invented 18 years ago.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
If they're going to build OS/2 on top of Linux then why not just use Linux? This brings back memories of the whole "Linspire" PR stunt.
I'm not a Linux expert so can someone explain why porting just the shell would be useful? Wouldn't it break compatibility with existing applications which use the KDE or Gnome APIs?
When I worked for the state there was a company contracted to develop a whole suite of Windows applications to move us off the old VAX green-screen interfaces into the modern world. Most of the department ran on Windows NT 4.
So naturally, the contractor developed all of their applications on a Windows NT 3.51 emulator running under OS/2.
Aaaaand after millions of dollars spent, the contractor demonstrated their applications (working flawlessly under the emulator in OS/2) got their money and high-tailed it, leaving us IT schlubs to implement the applications. All the apps immediately crashed when we attempted to run them in the real NT 4 environment. We never did get them working, except on the few workstations actually running OS/2 with an NT emulator.
Your tax dollars at work. Remember kids, watch your specifications when hiring a contractor!
Since MS has won the desktop OS battle, IBM has been behaving as a small company, but they are not. Sure the company that IS big IT must have more aspirations then just being a service provider?
And of course they are a lot more, but once they were the face of IT to ordinary people. You bought an IBM or at least an IBM compatible.
And now?
So if this story has some truth in it, it could mark an attempt by IBM to get back out there and fight in a crowded market place and not just charge 1000 dollars per hour for its personnel.
Doubt this is the case but I have always had the thought that if anyone can break the current stalemates it is IBM. It could force both hardware and software makers to worry about competition again.
Not that I think it is likely, IBM does quite well as it is. But it would be more intresting if it is true.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
They could port the OS/2 userspace APIs to linux. It would probably work pretty well. They could probably make it load and run OS/2 EXEs and DLLs unchanged. That would be cool.
But how many people would "Wine" about changes to the APIs during the transition that break specific apps? Or that a piece of hardware that worked on OS/2 Warp doesn't work on OS/2 for Linux because the driver API wasn't also ported?
IT managers ask, why now?
No. We just ask "Why?"
Buying software from IBM just encourages them to write more.
I find it very telling that many of the people that have commented on this story have low UIDs, lol
Living With a Nerd
This is the exact thing that would have a chance to make it as a general user desktop Linux distribution.
Of course, most FLOSS fanboys will scream and cry and hate all over IBM so it probably won't happen, but it would have a much better chance of success than the current offerings.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Finally, I could run my Telegard BBS so users could upload/download their turn files and (at the same time mind you) I could play my VGA Planets turn - from the same machine! Wowie wow wow. T'was awesome.
At least then it would be virus-proof!
Does this mean I have to brush up on my REXX syntax to write shell scripts in the IBM Linux distro? The most memorable part of OS/2 for me was installing it from about 40 floppy disks onto a system with a VGA monitor (640x480, 16 colors)
Now called z/OS, it is still popular too, mostly as the backend to all those OS/2 ATMs. However, neither will see a resurgence. The PC market is 'mature' and will not have room for another general purpose OS. The future of operating system is in the mobile device, then in dedicated purpose devices such as cars, appliances, and gadgets.
OS/2 was a basterd child. I had the first OS/2 developers kit. It cost $3,000, had no GUI (PM came later), and wouldn't compile "Hello World." The day after I got the SDK, I drove from SF to Seattle to attend the first OS/2 developers' conference at the Westin. Balmer was there but Gates was not. I wondered why the head geek did not show up for such a "big event." Now we all know why.
In 1996 I called IBM Support about the fact that my IBM Aptiva was having memory problems. When they found out I had OS/2 Warp installed they refused to help unless I installed MS Windows. I have not purchased an IBM product since.
There's also GNUStep and XFCE and the ROX desktop and probably many more.
KDE and GNOME are slightly warmed over versions of Windows, perhaps with a few hints of OSX. Those are not the last word in UIs by such a long way...
The WPS was object oriented. Right now GNOME-devs are talking about making gnome more "applicaton oriented" which is really "back to the age of pitchforks". I'd like to see a desktop like the WPS on Linux so that GNOME and KDE devs have something better to copy their ideas from.
As said elsewhere, it looks like this is not about the GUI, unfortunately.
This is all just my personal opinion.
Nope.
At the power plant we use OS/2 with Banyan Vines for our parts of our internal network. Finding compatible hardware was becoming more and more an issue so we switched to running OS/2 virtual machines with Microsoft Virtual PC. While the solution isn't perfect it does provide us time to transition our services/applications off OS/2. If IBM does reintroduce OS/2, it certainly won't change our plans to migrate away from it. It's a little too late, particularly since IBM cut off sales and support for OS/2 several years ago.
I found OS/2 quite stable for the year I ran it. I ran it because it was the only 32 bit os out at the time for intel hardware. I don't recall any stability issues that were above anything I experienced on Windows 3.1 at the time. And OS/2 came with something I think a lot of people would be on board with: REXX. REXX was an awesome shell language.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Bob Moffat ( http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-29/robert-moffat-pleads-guilty-in-galleon-group-case-update1-.html )
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
"I would not be so delighted to again deal with the SIQ lockups" - by Improv (2467) on Wednesday April 14, @12:57PM (#31846640) Homepage
This can, & has been, "gotten around" on OTHER OS', such as Windows NT-based ones (&, probably others as well of more modern variety), by using MULTIPLE MESSAGE QUEUES (so there isn't just a single one to lockup)...
----
"I also would worry about EA corruption" - by Improv (2467) on Wednesday April 14, @12:57PM (#31846640) Homepage
Then, instead of HPFS? You'd tend to think that IBM would stick by some variant in the LINUX world, like ext3 etc./et al, instead... simple!
APK
P.S.=> Lastly, pPer the subject-article's concluding quote:
"Hey, back in simpler times OS/2 was super badass. Both of the guys who ran it were hard core."
Well, per that line, & the way you speak? I must be replying to that "other guy", because I ran OS/2 2.1 - 3.0 here back circa 1994-1995 & I like it, a lot... I had all kinds of good tools for it, like GammaTech's utilities (much like Norton Utitilties was for DOS, with your defragger, GUI chkdsk, & more), The DeScribe Word Processor (good for its day), Borland C++ for OS/2 & I was "all set" pretty much, & loved it...
So, I agree - it'd be nice to see it "make a comeback", albeit with a LINUX solid core underneath & yet, to still have the cmd.exe command processor tty console too, & its functions as well in concert w/ those of LINUX command prompts/consoles/tty's too, like BA$H etc. also! apkj
If we can actually get MS Office ported to the OS2 Window Manager on a decent Linux distribution, Im all for it. I would switch my OS from WinBlows to OS2 in a heartbeat.
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
But... simply throwing new services onto a linux kernel does *not* make for a great new product. Novell tried this when with shoddy Netware services in their Open Enterprise Server, versions 1 and 2. They actually managed to to take two stable platforms and merge them into a bloody mess.
Both of the guys who ran it were hard core.
Yeah, them and NCR, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and WaMu. OS/2 was for real [1] [2] (see page 2).
I think WaMu was the last to ditch OS/2. I worked B of A. Any WaMu vets know?
This is seriously black humor, disentangling oneself from Big Blue. Let's not forget it.
--
Toro
BeOS, AmigaOS User Groups Say OS/2 Not As Worthy Of Rebirth As Their OS, Scuffle Ensues
General Availability (GA) Release 2.0 Of eComStation Announced For Autumn 2009
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
It's good to have dreams.
"2 guys who had it" jokes aside, back around 1994-95, OS/2 was way more common than Linux seems to be today. I knew several friends who had it and it blew Win 3.1 away. I actually considered getting it myself, until MS started touting Win 95. I remember them selling OS/2 pretty much everywhere you could buy software. IIRC, you could even buy it at Walmart. I suspect this was one of the main reasons that MS launched such a heavy-duty ad campaign for MS 95 (one of the biggest software ad campaigns ever launched up until then). After Win 95 came out, it pretty much disappeared, but there for a while it was pretty well regarded in computer-savy circles as a superior choice to Windows.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If anything will fuck up the works it's Stardock OD. That thing hooks so deep that it only begs to pork you.
I ran OS/2 for a year or so, back in the early 90's. It was a nice system and I had no real issues with it except that the Windows support was very slow. The system was stable and easy to use, and of course I liked the multi-tasking at the time. When 32-bit Windows came out and MS refused to license the Windows support stuff to IBM like it did for 16-bit application support, that was pretty much the end of the line.
However, with a new Linux core, IBM could in theory use X and with it use WINE (after some licensing magic). If Big Blue did that, OS/2 could suddenly have a pretty large application base, commercial support, and very likely could garner some market share. Sure, that's a hefty amount of change and would mean a complete revamp of WPS but if they replaced the core OS anyway there's little reason to go whole-hog.
It's very unlikely that IBM would do this but it's possible (if expensive).
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
I am not aware of any apps that are in demand, that only ran on OS/2.
It is my opinion that Linux has captured the users that would have stayed with OS/2, had OS/2 become more widely used.
I even ran OS/2 Warp back in the day, trying to run M$ applications (Wordperfect, for example) in it. Eventually then went to M$ NT, then Linux, back in the 90s.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Maybe it won't require a Gb of RAM to do what used to be done with 1Mb.
...one of my friends was proud of running Warp on his Thinkpad long after everyone else had moved on and were struggling with the onslaught of worms and such on their Windows machines. He was a bit of a snob.
Then out of the blue he gave up and installed Gentoo. I get a call from nearly every time he gets major patches, as he recompiles everything - he's a source snob also. Compiling on anything normal people use is a nontrivial amount of time lost from his life.
He is extatic. Warp or Presentation Manager or whatever it is, he's looking forward to compiling on the weekends, so he can bask in the glory that is OS/2.
Of course, when I show him something interesting in NetWare services running on SUSE, he gets sleepy. Yeah, fine, I get it, not very sexy. Uptime is somehow not so interesting to him any more. Something about "giving up and buying a hosted server" has stolen his soul.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Considering that one of IBM's core businesses is their mainframes, and their z/OS mainframes run Linux environments (I used to work on Java applications that ran under z/OS), its entirely possible they want to use OS/2 WPS as the desktop environment for z/OS. That might actually make a lot of sense and would easily translate to the PC. I really like OS/2's desktop and still think it was worlds ahead of what we have now. You could do things with it that you could only dream about under Windows, Gnome or KDE today. It just worked, and worked well.
What didn't work on OS/2 (and was its achilles heel) was the single input queue. An errant program (and there were lots of them) could easily lock up the message queue and freeze the desktop. They tried several workarounds but none solved the problem. I remember Netscape 4 for OS/2, it was the biggest POS ever and I'm still amazed IBM released it. A lot of that had to do with the SIQ. Whenever Netscape tried to access the network (which happens often in a web browser), it would freeze the entire desktop. Outside of the desktop, OS/2 was quite solid.
I still remember the first time I saw OS/2 2.0 (which was ridiculously buggy) running on a 486 with too little memory. There were two high-end Windows games running side-by-side in their own windows on the desktop. Each was running well as long as you didn't touch anything, but it took minutes to switch between the two because the machine didn't have the memory to handle both at once so it kept swapping it out.
Then there were the IBM commercials with people standing around a monitor talking about this great thing they were looking at. They could have been trying to sell a new monitor or computer called OS/2 for all you could tell from the commercial.
I was at my local HSBC Bank branch in the UK a few years ago and spied OS/2 in use by their staff as part of their load/mortgage assessment "wizard".
It was either OS/2 or Windows 3.1....
This was around 2005/2006?
Up until rather recently, a large majority of bank ATM's ran OS/2.
Many call centers ran software that used OS/2.
OS/2's attempt to reach the consumer market were laughable - they sponsored the OS/2 Fiesta Bowl in the 1990's, without explaining to the public what OS/2 even was - but the software was everywhere in the corporate world it seemed. (for those slashdotters who don't know what the Fiesta Bowl is, it's one of the biggest college football ball games.)
Ford car dealerships ran a satelite uplink system that required OS/2.
I used it to ran a multiline BBS. It was good stuff. Even today, many of the guts (and filenames) of Windows stem from MS's long ago partnership with IBM....the more stable portions of Windows.
Not sure what the relevance of it today would be, but it was more widespread than you might think.
But it's cool, back then they had printed documentation! Now if only I had a real reason to have Excel 3.0 for OS/2... Or a lead to get Word for OS/2...
OS2 is what pushed me unto the unix for good. My bad ass 486-25 sx (with math coprocessor), 16 meg of ram and WHOPPING 1.2gig full height scsi drive was hungering for some more fun. I had been running a hodge podge of operating systems and had settled on DESQView/X. I had it all, running windows 3.0 apps, command shells, x applications, even X apps from remote! But then a new version of OS2 came out (2.0? 2.1?) that promised me everything DESQView/X was giving me, but running with out DOS! THE FUTURE HAD ARRIVED!
OS/2 promptly ate my partition table and destroyed all my DVX, windows and dos partitions.
I was so effing pissed that it did this without really asking me anything that I swore it off. Fortunately something sorta BIG had just happened there on them ol' USENETs: The new 11 Floppy version of Slackware dropped. I installed it... and never looked back.
--- I do not moderate.
The only OS/2 machine I ever saw was in a bio-engineering lab as an undergrad. I was interviewing for a dev job in there, and the only drivers for the electron microscope were OS/2, so they ran OS/2 on it. Otherwise, I'd have no more reason to believe OS/2 existed than I do the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot.
Tell you what. Break the MS Office stranglehold on Industry, and the rest will naturally come into about. We'll have choice in OSes again as MS has to compete for real.
So get cracking on making OpenOffice better. That's where you should be spending your time.
You seem to miss the thousands of banks and financial institutions that were using it as well. OS/2 was far more prevalent in large businesses than it ever was with home users.
Well, at the time most people didn't really care about "real" multitasking (or weren't aware of it). Windows barely qualified at the time, and x86 Unix was just barely becoming readily available.
I know of quite a few multi-line BBSes that ran under OS/2. Another popular choice was DESQview on top of DOS (add QEMM for fun).
Techies were probably aware of it I'm sure, but computers were even more obscure back then: now everyone uses them, but few care about understanding them.
Although there are a lot of virtues in UNIX programming, some people just don't like it. They prefer richer APIs that Windows and OS/2 provide
I think its simpler than that. For windows OS you use one API. For OS/2 you use one API. For Mac you use one API. For Unix you have HOW many API's to use?
Unix (command line) rocks and its very similar across Unix's, but desktop Unix API's suck as there are more than one. As a developer I dont care whether the Unix desktop API is a, or b,c d, e, f. I just want ONE.
Would it not make more sense to open source the existing code base? As I understand it some of the code was created by Microsoft so they probably can't do so with that, but the Wikipedia article suggests that code from ReactOS might be able to fill the gap. That said, I guess it would have years of development to catch up on anyway, but surely it would require less work that way than something like Haiku?
Sounds interesting, but if it were legally possible(without win app support perhaps) release the original OS/2 Warp/4 as Open Source, or at least all parts possible to be developed from there, another more unique(NTish Kernel I suppose but) core on the market would be more attractive. I guess my selfish reasoning behind this is I find Windows Vista/7 and most distributions of Linux completely bloated, something new starting from (by todays accounts) a minimal OS in the mid-90's would be just the ticket for me.
For those who don't know, a Workgroup Folder allowed one to put a group of programs and/or documents in a single folder and then open/close those elements as a single logical unit. Open the folder, and all of your programs and associated documents popped open. Close the folder, and everything closed as a unit. It was very slick...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
According to IDC, IBM shipped a total of 4.5 million units of desktop OS/2 (with another 275,000 as servers) in 1995.
To put that in perspective, note that Apple shipped 4.8 million Macintoshes in 1995, all running System 7.5, plus another 800,000-900,000 System 7.5 upgrades.
It was almost as popular as the Mac in 1995, and the Mac was #2 to Windows at that time.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
"OS/2 promptly ate my partition table and destroyed all my DVX, windows and dos partitions", by juuri
"This market also contains many companies that will give us their total support in establishing OS/2 as the next standard in personal computing. If we harness this support with a series of great products and great marketing, OS/2 will win", billg 1989
"I was super enthustiac that we shipped OS/2 , SteveO"
'The demos of OS/2 were excellent, crashing the system had the intended effect '
'In the Mopping Up phase, Evangelism's goal is to put the final nail into the competing technology's coffin, and bury it in the burning depths of the earth. Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in,
"he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2." Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. make the complete failure of the competition's technology part of the mythology of the computer industry', Microsoft Evangelist 2000
"Both of the guys who ran it were hard core."
Thanks, now I've got soda all over my screen.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
And I have an even better idea: let's just specify what the interface between applications and their runtime environment is, and let the OS writers worry about the implementation details of what goes into the kernel and what goes into an userspace standard library.
Or in other words, just don't let shortsighted kernel hackers like Linus decide what the system API should based on their ideas of what belongs in the kernel and what doesn't. Application programmers really shouldn't have to care whether a piece of standard functionality lives.
Are you adequate?
Sigh, I wish my unfinished OS/2 Warp installation on VMWare Fusion didn't hang so I could play a bit with it for nostalgia. To the credit of VMWare, that emulates perfectly what it used to do on more than one system.
See subject-line & this quote from you:
"It makes you seem (how can I say this?) less than mentally stable & you might "be taken away" by doctors et al. who, for the sake of society, take those (and others, sometimes) with serious conditions into safe custody..." - by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14, @02:55PM (#31848182)
Is that supposed to "get my goat" or "rattle my game"? Clue - it's not.
However, now that you've spewed your b.s. all over the place in reply to me, in some weak attempt to "rile" me? Well, ok:
Care to answer the subject-line's question, & also this one -> Care to show us these items to your credit/name? Here goes:
----
1.) Your PHD in Psychiatry
2.) Your professional license to practice Psychiatry
3.) Your formal evaluation of nyself in professional environs related to psyhiatry
----
You know - the license, degree, & title + years of actual hands-on experience in the trenches as a "shrink" that you'd need to make assessments of my mental state & what-not as you have in some puny off topic trolling attempt to bother myself (& so COURAGEOUSLY too, posting as AC, lol!).
Yea, right... you have "none of the above" per that enumerated list, so... so much for your OFF TOPIC "opinions"!
APK
P.S.=> Off-Topic trolls: They're ALL the same... but, then again? I tend to make lemonade out of lemons like you so, I have to say that /. wouldn't be QUITE the same w/out the puny off-topic & easily dispatched trolls too though... apk
I used OS/2 1.3 - Warp between 1993 and 2000 both as a user and a developer with it as a target platform. Although at the top when I switched to Warp (1994), it was streets ahead of Windows (with the exception of NT 3.1/3.5 - but they had heavy resource consumption for the time!), there were still major problems:
1) The SIQ - Truly horrible - just as for Windows 3.0/3.1, it was just far too easy to get the whole system to lockup (basically all PM based apps used a single system input queue, thus if any blocked for long........)
2) Hardware support, though much improved with Warp was still very iffy, especially back in the days of OS/2 2.1, I remember setting up the netware drivers on my desktop - sheets of typed up A4, lots of config.sys hacking etc.
3) Even back then, the moment Windows 95 appeared (irrespective of it's technical merits), the GUI LOOKed ugly compared to Windows 95s.
It was fast and efficient though, I'll say that for it - a kernel written in assembler, rather than C, but that was probably the very same reason that it was inherently non portable apart from the briefly seen PowerPC version and the briefly living OS/2 2.1 SMP ("Special version"). I don't believe they even supported SMP on anything except that OS/2 2.1 build (i.e. they dropped it again for OS/2 Warp 3 and Warp 4 - maybe I'm wrong).
Linux fan and Win32 developer
WHOWEE ! THRE MUST BE SOME NEW DRUG DEALER IN TOWN ! What about reintroducing steam powered SUV or maybe polymer enhanced clay tablets anyone !!! ... ex OS/2 developer, circa 1990...
Isn't OS/2. What makes OS/2 is the core system, not the desktop plastered on top.
Not that its bad, just please call it what it is.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Eddie I and Jimmy G ride again!!
ATM's need it after what that hacker did!
Actually that is a good point. Ironically in what I thought was an unrelated chat, it came up that a banking chain in the area converted to Windows from OS/2. But it didn't last long. Somehow, troubled with problems of stability, and with hackers, viruses, etc, they gave up and CONVERTED BACK to OS/2. I know where the bank is, but don't off hand recall the name. I work for a company that was big on OS/2 back in the day. And as a result got several certifications on OS/2. I have probably forgotten most of it (but still have some books), and trashed the last OS/2 machine from storage last year. Still have some disks if I wanted to....but I don't.
OS/2 was the GUI of GUI's back in the day! I was saddened that Merlin (Warp4) didn't get the rap it should have (we know how IBM is with marketing) - it was great, it was stable, it was just schweet. Bring it on, bring it back; anything to put more competition in the marketplace for "Desktops" and "Servers"! Hey, while folks are at it, why doesn't someone chuck a fire under Apple to just get MacOS out to the masses - it's not like it's a hard modification to OSX to get it to run on most modern x86 machines - that in itself would throw Microsoft for a loop!
YankDownUnder Veni, Vidi, volo in domum redire
There are also a shitload of CNC machines that run OS/2.
JH
I had a short gig last year at a large bank in the SE and they still run OS/2 at their branches. While a most instaces are running in Virtual PC, they still have several hundred running on bare metal.
At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care that you're not here with me
I swear this is also the next version of Windows - Win32 API's on top of Linux.
I had to support OS/2 back in the day.
The average support call included someone stuffing up the configuration. It was faster to reformat than to fix the box... Hence, reformat was the rule of the day.
You have to remember that OS/2 was very configurable... That looks good on paper but people tend to chase that rabbit down the hole way to far.
This is a wolf in sheep's clothing... make it go away!
Um yeah sure, but the hack to make it recognize drives bigger than 512Mb was a pain in the ass.
I've seen it take a dump for no obvious reason. And, if you remember for a while, at&t stores used NeXT. Maybe there's a reason to stay mainstream.
I'll stick to *nix for now.
I want to use C64 GeOS as my window manager.
OS/2 was never very good. Sure it was better than win3.1 on paper but all the apps were win3.1 so it only caused issues due to slight incompatabilities. My roomate would use my computer all the time because his OS/2 machine was ALWAYS having problems. He used to write technical articles about OS/2. The add on tcp/ip stack was shit and was constantly causing issues. Windows 95 blew it out of the water(using a lot of its own ideas) good riddance. Amiga Dos was vastly superior.
Relying on one and only employee, vendor, OS, etc. is a recipe for disaster. I have on my computer 2 OSs with dual boot. Why not? The hard disks nowadays are immense.
I use mainly Windows, but sometimes I use and regularly update another OS. Just not to rely on one. I try to use this approach in all computer related matters. It is hard learned lesson.
I welcome OS/2 back! Why not to have 3 - 4 excellent OSs? And let them compete. If one is too ahead of others let make an effort to support others too. Otherwise it will end up as it always end up with a monopoly.
It is so easy to install 2 OSs on computer with dual boot menu at start up. This not only support other OSs, but makes "work" of computer viruses' authors much harder, as we move from a mono-culture in this way.
That's a great idea, how about an OS whose API is Boost and QT?
Assuming that by "QT" you meant Qt and not QuickTime, I have an idea for a name for an operating system like this. How about Kubuntu? Or perhaps MeeGo?
"easily dispatched"? You just wrote a wall of text in response to an obvious troll. You are the fertile dirt that the trolls rise out of...
...but I'm confused, who was the other guy?
What OS/2 "services" matter?
Personally, I dropped OS/2 like a hot rock when the community started making up BS rumors like this one. It was worse than the commodore and amiga communities. I just can't think of some good reasons why IBM would want to do that. They've sold the PC Company, now they'd want a beach head in PC software? Secondly, it's not like OS/2 isn't a brand with some baggage... They were smart enough to smell the winds of change when they did (it could have cost IBM billions and billions more to keep fighting that battle) they are certainly smart enough to know better now.
I could sort of see an IBM Linux distribution of sorts, I could even see IBM spending some funds on making it more desktop friendly but anything divided by 2? Not a chance.
Those were not guys, they were nuns (so the confusion is understandable).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmQ3f1PRnw0
It was good marketing, in the sense that it got your attention, but it was awful in the sense that it told you nothing about why you would actually want this, or what it does.
There's a free clone of WPS for Windows 3.1 that ran after a fashion on Windows 95. I played with it some a decade ago and I kind of liked it -- which is unusual as I don't care for Apple's offerings, think that Windows peaked back about the Win95OSR2 release, and am certain that Gnome has to be some sort of joke. (Mostly I use XFCE and the KDE applications).
Anyway, the Zip file is still downloadable -- http://ftp.gaby.de/pub/win3x/wpsfw151.zip and there are some screen shots at http://toastytech.com/guis/wps.html.
I wonder if WPS will run under wine?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
I count more than two guys here who claim to have run it. I'm one of those guys. So the other guy must have posted under multiple accounts more than the five times I did?
I ran OS/2, coded in it, bathed in it, loved it. It was the future, but it was not to be. I then picked up BeOS, another ahead of it's time sophisticated OS, but that failed too. I wonder if I'm cursed to marry myself to OSes that eventually fail into an obscure nostalgic fan base?
This implies Windows 7 and Ubuntu will fail soon.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
I know quite well of insurance company that is still running it's knowledge bases on an OS/2 token ring that talks to mainframe Z/OS. It is 100 hack proof and has had ZERO down time in the last 5 years. About the only thing I have ever seen that is more reliable is a craftsman steel handled framing hammer. When you do not have to upgrade the zillions of things that go with a networked Microsoft product, you can achieve stability.
Your comment inadvertantly cuts right to the point of this matter.
What the hell is "bringing OS/2 back" going to acheive? It was a great operating system in it's time, and offered multitasking and a file system that at least wasn't completely defective during a time when the viable alternative for PCs was shitty. Today, however, those problems are long gone. Every operating system in common use offers everything that OS/2 offered, and much, much more. How does "resurrecting" OS/2 on top of a linux kernel and a modern file system even make sense? What are you actually resurrecting? The mediocre GUI? The bundled utilities? Were there any?
Even acheiving flawless source or binary compatibility with a 10 year old deprecated OS seems like an impossible pipe dream, so it's unlikely that the few nutbag holdouts will even switch. Apparently they must be happy with what they have, and hopefully they're thoroughly firewalled away from anything else, so why would they even care?"
If this is a marketing effort intended to bring the OS/2 brand back, then go for it. An effort to build an OS/2 layer on top of something that is nothing like OS/2 seems pointless..
Did people actually read the article? It is about what to do with legacy OS/2 systems.
There are lots of legacy system still used by large companies and you have the choice of continuing to maintain them or developing a new system which isn't cheap. One large finance company I used to work for has just spent $100m replacing their workflow system and got one that does half of what the old system, after 20 years of modifications and tweaking, did for the money.
So reportantly IBM has considered buying modern hardware, runing Linux on it and then writing a version of OS/2 on top of that runs the old applications.
They may or may not do it.
It may or may not work.
If it does work it will replace some legacy systems sitting in basements and you will probably never hear about it unless you work supporting old OS/2 and AS/400 systems, like a friend of mine does.
I guess you've never seen eComStation run on modern hardware. It's damn fast. I've always considered getting a copy, but I've stuck with Linux rather than spending the hundreds of dollars per seat.
OS/2 fans have been petitioning IBM to either start selling new versions of OS/2 again directly or to open-source it for a long time. There are parts IBM simply doesn't own, including parts still owned at least in part by Microsoft. Getting those as FOSS is pretty doubtful.
If IBM can bring the SOM, the WPS, and some other things to a layer on top of Linux, that will be a nice environment. If they make it all Free or even Open Source, then many OS/2 fans (including me) will flock to at least try it.
If I could get a Linux distro with the usual open-source stack (glibc, glib, qt, gtk, perl, python, etc) that will run all my Linux apps along with OS/2 apps on top of OS/2 services for Linux all in WPS for an interface without some sort of emulator or virtual machine, I'd probably have that distro on half my machines by the end of the week it was released.
They did something similar by relaunching Lotus Symphony as a product based on OpenOffice -- so why not?
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
IBM never left the x86/x86_64 server space. They just left the desktop market. I could totally see WPS and a few other OS/2 features being useful in differentiating their server stuff, especially if people still running OS/2 or eComStation can move applications over without much porting effort.
... To the good old days, when I was doing janitor work in a building that happen to host Real Networks, before they became the Real Networks (used to do some voice mail stuff). Anyways, besides all the hardware and software I "borrowed" from them, they ended up getting a very early beta of OS/2, which I of course, "borrowed" (hey, i returned it a few days later, it was like 30 disks to copy). And a little digging I found out how I could get on the beta. Hey, in the early 90's, having someone send you 30+ disks every few months rocked.
Loved the OS, shit, it ran Dos games faster then dos did. And I could multitask on top of it. And run windows 3.1 apps!!!!!
Of course, W95 came out just a bit later and OS/2 was quickly forgotton.
lol
And I'd like to thank that law firm that left me the 2 486 cpu's and 16 megs of memory back then also. I know you left a note asking what happened to them, sorry I didn't get back to ya sooner.
Be seeing you...
How much COBOL code is still in use in the business world? Quite a lot.
OS2 was relatively popular in the financial world, and they are very, very conservative people. (I used to do a regular trade setting up machines to triple-boot DOS 6.22, OS/2 and Win98 for a friend with an accounting business. I don't know or care how he squared the licensing issues, but his business customers wanted those environments on one machine, and this was the solution he worked with. Nice back-pocket money for me ; kept him in regular income until he retired.)
If this is true (no opinion offered on this point ; it's not incredible), then I could see this as being IBM cutting away at the consideration of MS by a significant tranche of businesses. If you've got a stack of applications specific to your business that are built on an OS/2 platform, and IBM can offer you a platform that duplicates the OS/2 environment so that you can continue to use your known application suite without having to re-develop and re-debug them ... you're going to consider it. And in the red corner is the local MS shop offering to re-write your entire stack over a two-to-five year period.
It may no longer be true that "no-one ever got the sack for buying IBM", but IBM still have plenty of pretty savvy business and marketing people. Once people are happy with (let's call it ...) OS/3 as an environment for their OS/2 applications, then having a Linux architecture underneath would allow the rest of IBM's business consultancy services to leverage that architecture. That sounds good for IBM in short and long terms.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
See subject-line above: He was TOO easily dispatched... too, Too, TOO EASILY.
(Hey, because, after all: You don't see him answering those questions I asked that troll, now do you? Of course not: I have been waiting nearly a decade for a /. troll that can answer those with a "YES" alongside backing evidences thereof, & I sadly feel that it will never happen (or, does the troll's lack of response indicate otherwise?)).
""easily dispatched"? You just wrote a wall of text in response to an obvious troll. You are the fertile dirt that the trolls rise out of..." - by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14, @05:49PM (#31850558)
Correction - Trolls? They are TOO easily dispatched... just TOO easily, really, because, after all (again): You don't see a PHD "rise up out of said dirt", now do you? Once more - OF COURSE NOT! Trolls are trolls, and they dwell is said dirt, because it's what they like, and understand. Now, there IS the possibility that their reading comprehension is in question as well, & I strongly suspect that said troll is still "sounding out" each word I wrote in reply to he, in some attempt to comprehend his standing vs. said questions I asked.
APK
P.S.=> All trolls are large amusement, and simply because they are roughly @ the IQ of 10 below plantlife as they "come up out of the dirt" as you put it, & a couple of "choice questions" always serves to "SILENCE" them, too Too TOO EASILY, & everytime... apk
Now we can finally get back to the config.sys that is 100K long! (No more registry hacks required??)
but this idea of mixing OS/2 with Linux sounds like grafting an elephant onto a race horse. For some reason I fail to see the point.
Interesting sidenote. VMware had beta support of OS/2 back in version 2. They abandoned it. People flamed them pretty bad - including myself. Guess they didn't consider the market worth their technical time - or maybe they just couldn't do technically.
"How does "resurrecting" OS/2 on top of a linux kernel and a modern file system even make sense?" - by jsvendsen (1668031) on Wednesday April 14, @10:09PM (#31852982)
It would for IBM, &/or users of their midrange &/or mainframe OS, because one of OS/2's strengths was its excellent connectivity to said devices, "baked right in" into their then PC/Server client OS, in OS/2, for one thing... sure, you can or could get utilities for that & tack them onto other OS such as Windows (via RUMBA or ClientAccess as some examples I knew of & worked with over time in the Fortune 100-500 for said purpose), but, they aren't a native feature built by those who build zOS etc./et al...
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"What are you actually resurrecting? The mediocre GUI? The bundled utilities? Were there any?" - by jsvendsen (1668031) on Wednesday April 14, @10:09PM (#31852982)
Plenty really: It also came with a full-blown Office Suite in Warp 3.0 onwards as well... it wasn't 1/2 bad either!
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"Even acheiving flawless source or binary compatibility with a 10 year old deprecated OS seems like an impossible pipe dream, so it's unlikely that the few nutbag holdouts will even switch." - by jsvendsen (1668031) on Wednesday April 14, @10:09PM (#31852982)
I think that switching may not be the case, but, rather supplementing instead what they already use is more likely... however, in some cases? It might be a outright switch.
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"Apparently they must be happy with what they have, and hopefully they're thoroughly firewalled away from anything else, so why would they even care?" - by jsvendsen (1668031) on Wednesday April 14, @10:09PM (#31852982)
For the reasons noted above, as just some... I cannot speak for everyone, nor do I know their total requirements OR criteria, but, what I noted above are possibles...
APK