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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.
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.
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."
I'd be wary of suggesting that we ever will or should have an official desktop. Some competition and cross-pollination helps us share interface ideas that work after having separate communities really find out what doesn't. Those of us who actually used OS/2 generally also find the very idea of "IBM will save us" to be ridiculous. IBM long neglected, ignored, and occasionally kicked the OS/2 community. They're not really the poster child for sanity. We liked the product, but were very wary of big blue itself.
Also, as a general hint to other people, whenever somebody says "let's face it", it's a good clue that they're being a douche. It's an empty, self-congratulatory phrase.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Although I agree a new flavor of Linux is never a bad thing, the strengths that made OS/2 a contender back in the day don't exist now. There were very few viable desktop operating systems back then to choose from. Today is a vastly different landscape. From a technical standpoint this is interesting stuff, but certainly not something to write home about. I just don't see something like this making much of an impact to the current landscape.
Humor value noted, but for those wondering, he's talking about Extended Attributes, the big database of stuff about files, stored on HPFS. Kind of like a Resource Fork on a Mac file. EA corruption was one of the more annoying things you'd have to deal with on an OS/2 system. Examples of EA data would include the file's icon, data type (which would refer back to which program to open it), etc. Without it, a lot of the system would get really unhappy. There was even a hack IBM came up with to let you have EAs on FAT volumes, but that was a little less nice.
"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.
First off, you make an ASSumption that IBM is trying for a desktop operating system. Bad assumption.
I spent years working as a test technician and test engineer installing operating systems and testing hardware. I have experience with AIX, SunOS, Solaris, Novell NetWare 2.1, 2.2, 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 4.0, 5.0, etc., IBM OS/2 1.31, 2.0, Microsoft OS/2 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.31, MS DOS 2.0, 2.1...6.1.?, Microsoft Windows NT 3.51, 4.0,..., HP-UX 9.?, 10.*, 11.*, SCO Unix, Linux Slackware, SCO Unix and others. I also have exposure to MS Xenix, HP 3000, HP 1000, and others.
Of the lot, I liked IBM OS/2 2.0 the best. Most stable, easiest to use, powerful. You would have had to be there at the time to understand why IBM OS/2 2.0 didn't do better; Microsoft waged a marketing war to prevent OS/2 2.0's success. The irony is that Microsoft had rights to the IBM source code and used much of the OS/2 2.0 source code to improve its products. You could find copyright and version strings with IBM's copyright in areas such as file system code.
Microsoft isn't the biggest because it writes the best code. Only a Microsoft bigot would believe that.
And people who believe that Microsoft will continue to dominate clearly don't remember how it used to be that IBM dominated the market. IBM is still important, but it's turn as being number one is over. Microsoft, too, will fade. Its importance as a operating system is waning as the use of computers becomes network focused. Even with all its experience with writing operating systems, and its dominance of the operating system market, Microsoft couldn't make inroads into new markets such as cell phones and mobile devices.
Microsoft is a one-trick pony and that trick is being upstaged by actors who are far better.
Best regards.