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Death Knell for OS/2 Client
markhb writes "I hate to be the one to submit this story, but the end may finally have arrived for the OS/2 client. Stardock Systems announced today that IBM will not allow them to OEM a client package, and that IBM has no plans for, or strategic interest in, a new OS/2 client. Is anyone ready to get the source for SOMObjects and implement EA's and the Workplace Shell in Linux?"
This is semi-offtopic, and an Apple question, no less - but does anybody have any idea what the SOMObjects extension for Mac OS is, who installs it, and can I delete it without messing anything up?
(that would be my main argument against Mac OS, the numerous cryptically named extensions without explanations) - I suppose it's something inherited from the Taligent days?
You don't like OS/2, or give it up, that's your way. If IBM open-source it, those who love OS/2 can make it alive! OS/2 is a completely different to Linux.
Open-source is not a rocket to a software, just to keep the software not dying. Tons of projects is running well without a lot of attention from public.
IBM, can you hear me? If you want to give up something, replace it with a "recycle bin", why don't you donate it to someone who care and love it?
Do you think IBM might be led to release OS/2 source under GPL or similar license?
If so,
-Would anybody want to work with it?
-Would it happen soon enough? (a la GEM desktop, Turbo Pascal, etc, although these aren't GPL)
Hmmmm...
Certified Microsoft Notworking Specialist
I just got back from Warp Expo West with the following bits of information.
1. OS/2 Warp 4, Warp Server for e-Business and Workspace on Demand will be supported publicly at least until Dec. 31, 2004.
2. Lotus has announced SmartSuite 1.5 for OS/2 Warp 4 to be shipped sometime soon.
3. IBM will release these enhancements to OS/2 in the next twelve months: revised Domino web-server, enhanced WebSphere, NetBios name server, Netscape Communicator 5.x, Java 2, LDAP server, several developers tools, disk quotas for the JFS.
The only feature discussed for more than one year away is support for 64 GB of physical memory. Features will be developed which are appropriate for the revenue IBM recieves for selling OS/2.
The current sales volume for all versions of OS/2 is only 100 million USD per year, so don't expect much.
I've just installed OS/2 3.0 on a machine at home, and I'm disappointed with it. In particular, it doesn't run Windows applications! If you want to use Windows apps on it, you have to install a copy of Windows as well.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
>ALL MICROSOFT SOFWARE DOES THIS. >Most windows applications (all i used) do this....those that don't prolly have old unix programmers Oh, that is just SO untrue! All Microsoft software does NOTHING (in common). I can think of no standard thing about Windows or any application running on it. Every app that I (am forced to) use on Win is a new learning experience. Sometimes the "Apply" is there, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes you have to press it first, and sometimes merely OK will suffice. Most times, they only crash in very similar fashion (entire system frozen). Ya no wot? It's as if MS is full of free-spirited programmers who have no prior knowledge of GUI's, and no documentation at all to go by. They just re-invent a GUI for their own app, like those Linux freeware guys; every new whiz-bang idea is thrown in to improve the experience, but in no standard way. I'm all for improvement, but PLEASE stick to standards/conventions where the user experience is concerned. S/W Development Rule #1: Minimize changes that affect what the user sees and how they act. The migration from Win3 to Win95 blew that rule out of the water! Gimme OS/2 and the WPS; with left hand on keyboard and right hand on mouse, I'll out-perform ANY user activity on any other user/platform! With my eyes closed!
Ken
As a matter of fact, try this:
Two very experiended users; one OS/2 (any version) and one Windows (95 or later).
Each has their mouse die, pointer frozen, click does nothing.
Ask each to save data, close all apps, shutdown normally.
Who wins! Now that's proper implementation of a GUI!
Ken
Actually, Brad Wardell OWNS the company. If you want to see some interesting flame wars going on, take a look at comp.os.os2.advocacy, where people have been flaming Brad for a while due to his choice of newsreaders.
Brad, AFAIK, doesnt really care what OS he develops on/uses, as long as he can write some software that people will buy.
I totally agree. Nothing has been officially announced by IBM. OS/2 is therefore still here to stay.
Oh c'mon!
OS/2 by itself may not be a "business model", but have you ever tried to sell it to a friend?
Would you start a company that sold OS/2 as its primary source of income?
IBM does not consider the development of the OS/2 client to be a profitable undertaking.
Would you disagree?
Linux may not be a good car, but helps a good car to make!
Ken
Microsoft wants to be the end-all in every market. IBM however has major problems trying to get into markets that aren't its core business. It seems like IBM is able to "self-regulate" itself. Its managers may be so "focused" that they can't see other markets. This might be the best thing that could happen to IBM...
-Brent--
Oh, that's too bad. This dual-speed PCMCIA CD-ROM drive that I have was a "throw away" around here, as is all "old" (> 1 year old) technology. My newer CD-ROM drive is hot-pluggable into the Ultrabay.
$15-20 might just get you enough diskettes to copy from the Warp CD, as several other appends have suggested. Not to worry, many others have been there before you. I just hope that you get it right the first time (ALWAYS install plain-old VGA support, then upgrade afterward) so you don't have to do it again, and again, and again.
If you can't boot the thing because of a video problem, remember; Alt+F1 at the "boot blob" (.... OS/2) to get your recovery menu, where anything can be fixed, given enough knowledge.
Ken
I think IBM doesn't want to compete against StarDock when they can go to thier big customers who can't move off of OS/2 before then end 2001 (When OS/2 Warp 4 becomes unsupported). My guess is that they are reselling the same stripped down 'not-a-server/not-warp-5' OEM special for about 3 Mil a pop site-license.
Once they've drained all the $$$ out of that channel, if any OS/2 isn't dead (yeah, right) they gladly sell the dregs to a StarDock.
Anonymous 'cause that price might change, posted 'cause I think the deal sux
Wish we saw more testimonials like that.
? /pdocs-usa/softupd.html
Yes, upgrading 2.x was painful.
Wanna see something REALLY neat? I don't know what your Internet speed is like, but you just HAVE to check out RSU (service to Warp4) at this site;
http://ps.boulder.ibm.com/pbin-usa-ps/getobj.pl
Apply service to all components, without a single diskette or CD. Live from the Internet, and a single (automatic) re-boot at the end!
Would that Linux reaches this level of sophistication some day!
Ken
Will the last OS/2 user to get fed up with IBM's bullshit please remember to turn out the lights when they leave? IBM have got to have some of the most lamebrained idiots in the world in their upper management.
Yes, they do the same things, and one day, Linux/X may actually be half decent at it.
But for now, it's the difference between driving someplace in a nice new Limo/Mercedes/BMW/Porsche/Car-of-your-choice, and an 30-year-old, unmaintained 2CV.
Sure, they'll both get you to the same place, but one is actually enjoyable, whereas the other is barely more than a rusty bucket-of-bolts (nothing against the 2CV -- but they ain't the same as a BMW!)
Get familiar with them. Hell, I use GNOME right now, and it gets the job done. But it's nowhere near as fun as the WPS ever was (even in it's old, clunky 2.0 days)!!!
One's fun, the other's simply a utility.
* - * - * - * - *
I guess it's sorta like your first love... there's always a fondness that you'll never be able to quite recapture.
OS/2 was my first love.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Is Mr. Gerstner aware of the far reaching decisions of the managers in his company?
I can't believe after all this time and all of the OS/2 following still around that IBM wouldn't continue to court a cash cow! I mean, come on, they continued with the RPG machines (AS400 now) long after everyone thought they'd never see and RPG program again; and now the AS400 line and 'strategy' is big winner.
What's next IBM? Is the venerable and highly effective MVS, a.k.a. OS/390, going to be replaced with MS Win/390 because it would be cheaper to support?
Oh, and give us a break on this 'strategy' thing; IBM is the world's biggest computer company and has many many irons in the fire, (read 'strategies'), at the same time. All good businesses do have multiple pots cooking on the stove.
OS/2 may be a stuggle for you IBM, but even MVS had to be remarketed to the business community; it was and is good technology that is hard to pass up once the facts are presented.
The same can be said of OS/2!
Bill Pier
Long Beach, CA, USA
How does OS/2's Presentation Manager compare to NeWS and Hyperlook?
So, powers-that-be, what does this tell you about antitrust activity?
"Competition everywhere" indeed.
Well, at least the internal helpdesk still supports it... for now.
Ken
Don't be silly. You've been listening to the wrong FUD. The Macintosh is not more secure because it is more obscure. It is more secure because it is not multiuser, does not have an interactive command layer, is not remotely adminnable- in other words, it is utterly hobbled and limited as a server. That's what they wanted. There _are_ no secrets to getting root on a Mac because the concept doesn't even apply. If you can use it at all you're 'root', but you have to be sitting in front of the box mouseclicking- that's the way it was designed, and that's the way it is.
MacOS as 'security through obscurity' is the stupidest concept I've ever heard. 'security through inability' is more like it- and that is exactly, exactly, what they want.
The font thing always annoyed the hell out of me. What's the point in having a 1024x768 monitor, if all the dialog boxes had 36 point fonts and took up the same third of the screen they would have under 640x480?
From what I saw of Warp 4, it looks like IBM finally cleaned the PM up quite a bit. For those of us who were there in the 2.x era, Presentation Manager was one of the ugliest and confusing GUIs ever invented (and, yes, that does include Windows 3!).
For example, OS/2 2.x shipped without icons for many PM programs. Which means you had to launch them from a command shell. OK, except the command shell icons were buried about 3 folders deep some place.
And here's another for those who think that dragging a floppy to the trash is confusing: How about right-clicking on the desktop to shut down? In this context a 'Start' menu starts to make sense.
Sorry to be ranting, but all of this talk of the "powerfullness" of PM is kinda moot because for many years the uglyness of it was getting in right in your face. (And yes, I know that there were some wonderful $50 shareware improvements. Tell that to the people who were paying the client licences.)
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I use gnome too.
It has a *LONG* way to go before it can seemlessly integrate apps and OS functions the way PM and the WPS do. I hope it gets there someday.
IBM marketed OS/2 heavily to IBM mainframe shops. One of the big sells of the "extended edition" (which only ran on authentic IBM PS/2s, IIRC) was that it included terminal emulation software.
OS/2 always was (and probably still is) the mainframe gateway OS of choice. What they (and the PC hardware guys) never really caught onto was that there was a huge market out there for running network applications on PC server hardware. Enter Compaq and Windows NT.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
The WPS is the biggest thing I miss about running OS/2. OS/2 rarely crashed, but had some occasional quirks with the Presentation Manager input queue that made rebooting necessary. I also never liked the way it changed font and icon sizes when you went above 800x600 resolution. But aside from that, OS/2 is great. I'd love to see something similar to the WPS for Linux though!
interface leaves much to be desired????
Try any of this in windoze:
1) Move the thing a shadow (shortcut) points to in OS/2, and the shadow (shortcut) still knows where it is...right down to config.sys entries.
2) Do the above with a whole group of things
3) Change the colors for every element of an application using OS/2's system color pallette and drag drop. No need for ANY code to be written to take advantage of this feature...it's all in the OS/2 core SOM/DSOM model.
4) All containers from EVERY OS/2 PM application can be SHARED AMONGST THEMSELVES!!! For example, I could use the PMView file selector that does nice thumbnails (The thumbnails actually become a part of the actual image file through EA's) to drag a thumbnail to a folder's background image container...voila! I just changed that folder's background image! With an application that the OS didn't know anything about!
5) TEMPLATES! I can create, say, an FTP Folder just by dragging an FTP Template to the place I want to make it. Yeah...I can see FTP servers as if they are a folder on my desktop...THAT is REAL internet integration, Microsoft!!! (And was done a year or two before you thought of it) Other templates exist for EVERY OBJECT you can use under OS/2.
6) REXX Scripting. Unlike Linux, we only have one main scripting language...but it is used for everything and is consistent....Take for example ZOC, PhotoGraphics Pro, GTIRC.... If you prefer PERL...it can be embedded in REXX!
7) Consistent context menus. OS/2 has had RMB context menus since long before Microsoft thought of them. You see...In OS/2's WPS, EVERYTHING is an OBJECT. ANYTHING you can do with an object will appear on it's context menu.
8) An interface that MAKES SENSE! The right button to drag, left to select makes sense! You don't accidentally move things that way!
I'm sure others can add much much more, but these are the things you are missing. You obviously didn't take the time to learn the WPS and how it works...assuming that the Windows interface is somehow 'right'
OK people, here's the deal. Banks don't roll their own ATMs. Several companies that make ATMs and the software that drives them use OS/2. Last I checked both Unisys and NCR did, I think their were some others too ...
Fot those who have neve rdealt eith the financial market place, legacy hardware/software is more or less the rule. These machines will be running OS/2 for quite some time.
Besides ATMs many popular credit card imprint machines run OS/2 as well.
/dev
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
I started using OS/2 at version 2.0. I first got it because I wanted to multitask on a 386/25. I had a BBS I ran, and needed to use the computer while it was going. A BBS doesn't use much in the way of system resources, so I figgured it would be easy.. it wasn't. DesqView was as close as I could get. Then I found OS/2.
:) If you want an easy to use GUI, in a system you can get up and running very quickly without editing text files, it's great. If you want flexability and source code, UNIX is where it's at. It all depends on what you want in an OS. I use Linux a lot, and I really like it. I still load up OS/2 once in a while, but I've moved so much of my work to Linux now that I just don't need it as much anymore. I still miss the GUI though.
Keep in mind, this was about 1993, Win95 had not even been announced. There was talk about Ciaro, Chicago, or whatever, but it was all vapor.
I still like it's GUI better then anything else I can find. Including KDE and GNOME. WPS is intuitive, fast, and can be very good-looking with help. IBM is a business company, so the defaults were a bit dry, but with a little config it can be really nice. And there are no config files you need to mess with to do it. You can improve performance by editing CONFIG.SYS, but it's not required. OS/2 can perform resonably well on my old 386/25. Linux/X is painfull.
As for your comments, Yes, it has a command shell, with DOS-like commands. It was marketed as a DOS replacement, so they wanted it to be familiar. There were 2 command shells, the OS/2 shell, and the DOS emulator. It's DOS emulation is amazing, more so considering the time it was written. There were programs I couldn't run in real dos that worked great in OS/2's DOS box.
The GUI is of thier own design. It's object oriented, and very feature rich. M$ only wishes they could write such a good GUI. The default configs sucked though, you really had to take a little time and edit the color scheme and maybe throw a background up. It is nothing at all like X, nor was it ever intended to be as far as I can tell. I found it much eaiser to learn WPS then most X window managers.
It does not come with remote administration. That is one area I always thought they needed to work on. There are programs like PCAnywhere for it, but that's not nearly as good as a UNIX system's capabilities.
I thought the interface was eaiser then anything else I've used before or since. It made a ton of sense once you remembered you have more then one mouse button. EVERYTHING could be right-clicked to get a context menu. And most programs included that support too. The Win-OS/2 program was a bit of a hack, but it was a pretty good emulator. It basicly ran Win3.1 under it's DOS emulator. The windowed version was a video driver hack. There is probably some stuff the WINE team could use in that area.
It's great because at that time there was nothing that could touch it based on technology and usabilty. I think there are a few things they should have fixed early on, that they knew about and gave us kludges for. Like the SIQ problem. Now, I'd say Linux has gotten close to it's technology, but has a ways to go before usability can even come close. We had that in OS/2 in 1993! Win95 and NT have decent GUI's, but still lack when compared to OS/2. WPS and SOM still have no equal, IMO.
Is it better then UNIX? That all depends. For UNIX users, probably not. For OS/2 users, certainly. For Windows users, well, anything is better!
I really wish IBM would just open the source under GPL or some other OSS license and let those of us who want it work on porting the parts we like to Linux. With Linux as the kernel and SOM/WPS as the UI it would really rock. But so far Big Blue has declined many efforts to get the code. In this latest situation Stardock even offered to pay for it, just to make a new version of OS/2 Client. *sigh*
Of course, now there is little software available. So it's been going down for a while. There's some great stuff, but Linux is getting all the attention now. Hopefully IBM will see the light and help us get some of the great parts of OS/2 into Linux. Come on IBM! Follow the lead of SGI! They're giving us XFS, can't you give us WPS/SOM?
I hate to be a pessimist, but I doubt that any other company could have done any better. It has nothing to do with the quality of the software.
Consider things like the Amiga, the Atari's, and even the Mac. All were better than the MS stuff of the day, yet they failed utterly in the face of the brick wall that Microsoft turned out to be.
Yes, OS/2 was a better OS than Windows in every aspect when it came out. It may still be now (I haven't used it in several years), but the fact is that OS/2 is dead. As is the Amiga, the Atari ST, and all the other computers I held dear. Even Apple, which has always had a bigger maketshare than Amiga, OS/2, et all, has been struggling.
It is the nature of the real world that for the most part only "new" things can have a significant impact. Linux (despite really being a 30 year old OS) is "new" enough that it might have an effect. We can only hope that the community will win where IBM has failed.
While I appreciate the ability to customize Slashdot to include the headings from OS/2 News and Rumours and Warpcast, the lack of OS/2 coverage at Slashdot has always been a major disappointment. After all, the byline is News for Nerds, not News for Linux Users, and OS/2 users(like myself) tend to be rather nerdly :-)
Anyway, I don't see this as a death knell for OS/2. IBM has a habit of saying NOTHING about what their plans are until it's just about to bear fruit. I suspect this is a result of their dealings with the DOJ, and can only hope that Microsoft will behave in a similiar fashion after the DOJ finishes with them(ie: no more vaporware announcements.) I consider the fact that IBM is still releasing fix packs, and other items for OS/2, to say a lot more about IBM's support of OS/2 than any lack of news from IBM. These items are things such as the just released Java 1.1.8 update and the beta of Netscape 4.6. It's rather hard to pronounce something dead if the vendor is actively updating it.
I suggest waiting to see what comes out at Warpstock (one of those OS/2 related news items I would have expected to see grace Slashdot's front page). IBM plans to have representatives there and I'm sure the OS/2 users will be after them for information. Weither or not it's something us OS/2 users would care to hear remains to be seen.
Well actually Commodore released a new version of
the C64 long after the Amiga. Remeber the white C64 and the C64 based gaming console?
The problem with Commodore was:
1. Bad marketing, the marketing was usually
targeted at a different crowd than the
people who actually would benefit from
buying the system.
2. Premature entry into the information appliance
market (CDTV).
3. Production of a non-competetive gaming
consoles (C64G and CD32).
4. Loosing the blueprints of the new graphics
chips.
5. Overspending on retaining marketshare in the
US, when Europe went well.
6. Lousy CEO wich didn't use computers, didn't
understand what drove the market and
spent millions on a corporate Jet when the
company was struggling. (I guess he also
alienated loads of talent within the company).
The fact that IBM drops further investments into
OS/2 comes as no surprise, although the product
has allways been superior to Windows it has also
been a bit expensive for most people and again
the marketing has been a bit off. I remember
adverts in Dr. Dobbs where IBM tried to highlight
the power of their GUI, only the screenshot looked
totally incomprehensible, with tons of different
icons -- this at a time where programmers where
willing to loose performance (Windows 3) in
exchange for a easy to understand GUI. The retail
price of OS/2 has also been about
twice that of Windows.
My experience with IBM is that they DO support
their technology for an extended period of time
when their customers need it. One example is the
continued support for Java 1.1 when Sun has pushed
on to the Java 2 platform.
It is sad that OS/2 didn't make it further, since
it was (from a technological standpoint) a truly
superior choice in comparision to Windows.
Hail to all the systems consultants who decided
on OS/2 instead of Windows. The decision is
probably a pain in the butt today, but at least
it was the right technical decision to make at
the time.
FWIW, OS/2 was not the first OS to be "the first 32bit, multi-tasking, OS." The Amiga and several *nix flavors were to that point in the 80s, before OS/2. Probably systems like VMS as well.
I understand what that suggests about its reliability and stability, but that doesn't have anything to do with IBM's desire to get rid of it as a desktop operating system.
- Old Man of the Mountain ---- "I want to disturb my neighbor"
You must have the "red box" (OS/2 for Windows). During the 3.0 days, IBM produced two versions, one with Windows and one without. The sansMS version was made so they didn't have to pay MS royalties. "Everyone has Windows, so why sell it to them again?" (Remember, this is all 3.1, not 95.)
I had to learn IBM SAA/CUA in order to create a text-based mainframe interface that emulated OS/2 1.3 back in '89. It was not only a learning experience, and fun, but a real eye opener! The CUA standard covers it all; text, GUI, mouse, keyboard. If adhered to during interface development, it makes it so easy to add voice, thought-control, whatever!
Ken
I never mentioned anything about my attitude towards IBM. I merely stated that I really liked OS/2 and was disappointed that Version 5 of the client was not going to be developed. My comments had nothing to do with the PS/2 or how much attention I pay to IBM.
As an OS/2 fan, the lack of security in the product was always troubling
The thing that impressed the hell out of me about OS/2 is how well designed it is.
All windows are treated the same, including the root window (change the property on the root window to support openning multiple copies and go to town).
You can set background images/colors in any window (usefull for marking projects). If you first install without the multimedia extensions, you can only use bitmaps in windows. You can even drag-n-drop image files onto the background image property. By installing the multimedia extensions, you now can drag-n-drop jpegs.
OS/2 is also very forgiving. I had a box that was dual boot OS/2 and NT. Usually OS/2 was running. Didn't have a problem. When I would boot over to NT, BSOD, BSOD, BSOD, with all kinds of bizarre messages. Turns out that the heat sink on the processor had come off and the machine was overheating. I never noticed because OS/2 didn't notice.
It certainly is a sad day. IBM should do the same for OS/2 that SUN is doing for Solaris, free for non-commercial use.
Does this mean there won't be any desktop version of OS/2? Will they keep the Server version? Is IBM going to produce a different product instead?Sorry if it's in the Usenet artical, but my news server really sucks.
OS/2 Warp Desktop Tour; Index
Ken
Right. It should be noted that the OS/2 kernel is riddled with so much i286 and i386 assembly code that it's apparently unportable. (IBM tried porting to the PPC but never got out of beta.)
NT was designed to be the solution to that problem. See the
(Note that NT has lots of OS/2 code in other places, specifically the file+print sharing LanMan code.)
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Hmmm.....my link doesn't seem to be working. Any body else?
Got HTML? Want LaTeX? Try html2latex
OS/2 Warp Desktop Tour; Index
Ken
I'm curious why you think the MacOS 8.x UI is a rip-off from OS/2? Especially since, aside from some window dressing, the MacOS UI has been pretty static since 1984.
Could it be the contextual menus? OS/2 didn't invent those - they were in the Xerox PARC GUI, and I think Apple Lisa and early Unix UIs might have had them as well.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Well, last year I saw a voice mail system running Microsoft OS/2 1.3 - The technician indicated that there was some problem with later versions so they buy it from Microsoft for $600 a box.
I would imagine that ATM manufacturers have enough resources to engineer around the 16-bit to 32-bit OS/2 issues, especially because vendor support is probably critical in this area, so maybe the issue isn't as general as I made it out to be.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
IBM really just wants those of us who admire OS/2 to go away. We don't, and it pisses them off to no end. While Microsoft tries endlessly to bribe people into writing false testimony about their operating systems, IBM has to pretend they don't hear us. It must be embarrassing to be a multibillion dollar company who can't even KILL OFF an operating system properly.
I doubt OS/2 is quite dead yet, but this is certainly a very, very disappointing event to those of us who still use it.
On the other had, I guess this is the first time OS/2 has ever received the front-page Slashdot treatment. Too bad it had to be such bad news before Slashdot would recognize it...
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
I'm pretty sure System V/386 came out first. When did BSD 386 come out?
:) I read it back when I thought Windows 95 was decent. [I was naive])
There were LOTS of other 32-bit OSes for cheap Intel hardware, too, like Coherent and DesqView/386. (Those who deny that DesqView is an operating system should read Andrew Schulman's excellent work, Unauthorized Windows 95, although I'm sure OS purists won't like it
Besides, OS/2 isn't a fully 32-bit OS: it has some 16-bit code, although most of it is for running legacy applications.
My journal has hot
Since people are having problem with the link:
---
From: "Brad Wardell"
Subject: Judgement Day results
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 13:46:45 -0400
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NNTP-Posting-Host: brad.stardock.com 209.69.142.81
In 1998, Stardock took the position that if IBM had no current or projected
plans for a new fat OS/2 client, that it was in the interests of OS/2 users
and the computing community in general that a third-party should work with
IBM to license OS/2 technology on an OEM basis and make a new client
available.
To that end, late last year, Stardock prepared a business plan and opened
negotiations with IBM. The wheels of bureacracy grind slowly, but eventually
it was up to "IBM" (executive level) to make the ultimate call on
proceeding.
For the past 6 months, Stardock and IBM have been working closely together
in hammering out the details of an OS/2 client. Everything from potential
names down to which minute components would or would not be included. These
meetings included multiple in-person meetings with IBM staff and executives
here at Stardock's office complex in Livonia Michigan.
With an agreement in principle in place, the last major hurdle was this week
in which the IBMers in favor of our proposal (mostly in Austin) presented
their case to IBM as a whole.
The call has been made -- there will be no new client from Stardock and IBM
has indicated that they have no plans for an OS/2-based client of their own.
Though IBM indicated Stardock had the strongest proposal, they have decided
that it is currently not in IBM's or their customer's interests to license
any current OS/2 technology on an OEM-basis.
There was never any discord between IBM and Stardock over financials,
technical viability, target market, or the like. IBM has simply finally
made the decision that a new OS/2 client would be in conflict with their
strategic directions.
Stardock would like to extend a special thanks to all the IBMers (and in
particular Ken Christopher and Timothy Sipples) who went above and beyond
the call in working with us and going to bat inside IBM. Remember when you
meet folks like them, who are and have been intimately involved with OS/2,
that their hands may be just as tied as yours when the IBM Corporation as a
whole sets policy.
Everything that could be done was done.
Brad
---
Brad Wardell
Product Manager: Object Desktop & The Corporate Machine
http://www.stardock.com
---
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Actually, it's a rule that the deader a system gets, the higher it's consultant rates go up.
Look at the undercutting Windows NT consultants. The price of popularity is cheap labor.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
That's probably just a troll anyway, but I'll say:
a) Use OS/2 4.0 - It's MUCH neater, cleaner, etc.
b) Don't make yourself look silly by trying Win95 software on OS/2...
*sadly waves zippo in air*
It should be noted that OS/2 1.x (1987?) was designed to run on the 286 and was 16-bit, and that 32-bit support didn't come in until 1990 with OS/2 2.0. By then, I'm sure someone (SCO?) was selling a i386 Unix.
During the 2.x and 3.x era, there still was 16-bit code in OS/2. I don't know about today.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I've been running an OS/2 machine since 1993 when OS/2 2.0 came out. Since then, I've upgraded to 2.1, 3.0, and 4.0. In fact, I'm STILL using it for my Quicken & TurboTax stuff. Three of my boxen are linux, but I'm still keeping that spunky little 486 with OS/2 around. This is really a depressing day.
Presentation Manager still has (IMHO) the best OOUI out there. None of this foo.lnk B$ from Micros~1 that breaks every time you move the item you supposedly have a shortcut to. Instead, PM shadows were managed such that they *always* knew where the original was.
Not to mention being a better Windows than Windows. I remember as an undergrad...running a WinDOS circuit design package that kept crashing on the Pentium Win3.1 machines in the labs. Running it under OS/2 on my 486 was a little slower, but it knew how to actually use a swap file and not run out of memory halfway through loading the final 32-bit RISC processor (designed from basic components) and crash.
It's a real shame that OS/2 is/has died. IBM probably should have spun it off into its own entity a la Lexmark. Maybe then someone would have had an incentive to push it a little harder, market it a little better, and actually care if it succeeded.
OS/2, you WILL be missed.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
Actually, you don't really need a dreamcast :)
:(
OS/2 runs a lot of the older DOS games better than DOS ever did. And did you ever see OS/2 *native* Quake? WOW. Makes the windoze and linux versions look like they are running on half the machine!
That's one thing I miss under linux...not being able to play stuff like Epic pinball, jazz jackrabbit, etc.
...but linux has quake III, if you have the hardware (which I don't)
Under VMWare???
Does it work?? How well? I'm getting a new machine soon, and might try this.
Subject: Judgement Day results
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 13:46:45 -0400
From: "Brad Wardell"
In 1998, Stardock took the position that if IBM had no current or projected plans for a new fat OS/2 client, that it was in the interests of OS/2 users and the computing community in general that a third-party should work with IBM to license OS/2 technology on an OEM basis and make a new client available.
To that end, late last year, Stardock prepared a business plan and opened negotiations with IBM. The wheels of bureacracy grind slowly, but eventually it was up to "IBM" (executive level) to make the ultimate call on proceeding.
For the past 6 months, Stardock and IBM have been working closely together in hammering out the details of an OS/2 client. Everything from potential names down to which minute components would or would not be included. These meetings included multiple in-person meetings with IBM staff and executives here at Stardock's office complex in Livonia Michigan.
With an agreement in principle in place, the last major hurdle was this week in which the IBMers in favor of our proposal (mostly in Austin) presented
their case to IBM as a whole.
The call has been made -- there will be no new client from Stardock and IBM has indicated that they have no plans for an OS/2-based client of their own.
Though IBM indicated Stardock had the strongest proposal, they have decided that it is currently not in IBM's or their customer's interests to license any current OS/2 technology on an OEM-basis.
There was never any discord between IBM and Stardock over financials, technical viability, target market, or the like. IBM has simply finally made the decision that a new OS/2 client would be in conflict with their strategic directions.
Stardock would like to extend a special thanks to all the IBMers (and in particular Ken Christopher and Timothy Sipples) who went above and beyond
the call in working with us and going to bat inside IBM. Remember when you meet folks like them, who are and have been intimately involved with OS/2, that their hands may be just as tied as yours when the IBM Corporation as a whole sets policy.
Everything that could be done was done.
Brad
---
Brad Wardell
Product Manager: Object Desktop & The Corporate Machine
http://www.stardock.com
-- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
I'm proud to say that my second OS after DOS was OS/2. I did my first install (ver2.1 with MM/PM) on a 386SX/25 with 1MB of memory (want do you expect I was a sophmore in college, I had no money). It was the first time I have ever seen an OS actually blow out a microprocessor. A week of running it melted the poor thing. I upgraded to an AST 486 with 12mb of ram and ran the same install for two years with no software problems. The only time it crashed hard was when a hard drive failed and took out the swap file, the PM backups and a lot of games. Six minutes of changing the paths in the config.sys, had a working but limping system up and running.
Most of my time was in Win/OS rather than straight OS/2, but I was the only one in the rez hall who could do that while still keeping Descent, NASCAR Racing and a terminal session running. I've got to say that OS/2 was the closest I ever got to actually having Big Iron in my computer. I defy anyone to name an OS that has 2 kernels running at the same time and can switch them when one of them fails. Yes, the single ended input queue blew chunks, but a good app was written to expect that. I've since moved to a Mac but I still kinda miss the OS/2 desktop and having 3 copies of needed files on hand when the whole deal bites the dust. Reboot, wait for the little box, hit alt-F1 and select the most recent desktop backup and !bang! there you were again. To bad the rest of the world went for bloatware and frills. By the way playing with the appearance manager and the thickness of the lines made for a much better looking desktop.
The sourcecode for some of the parts of OS/2 is on the loose. This includes the kernel source, the textmode applets, and the multimedia subsystem. Unfortunately not the PM/WPS sources. I have them myself, and they are quite interesting reading. At least someone taught IBM and MS how to comment their code...
It should be the first 16 bit, multi-tasking OS for x86 platform.
True only if you further qualify "first 32-bit multi-tasking OS"; 32-bit machines supporting multitasking OSes existed long before the 80386 came out.
It might have been the first 32-bit multi-tasking OS for "IBM-compatible PCs" - did it, in fact, come out before, say, System V/386? If not, then you might have to further qualify it as "the first 32-bit multi-tasking OS that might've become mass-market" (feel free to insert debate here about whether a PC UNIX, back then, was likely to become mass-market).
In what way does that constitute "fragmentation"? I'd consider OS/2 "fragmented" only if there were multiple versions that weren't fully binary-compatible and weren't fully source-compatible (other than "not all applications built on/built for/written for release N run on Release N-1")
First, this does NOT mean the death of OS/2, or of the client. You can STILL buy OS/2 Warp 4, and it STILL works great. I won't waste your time touting the benefits of OS/2 Warp 4, but they do exist. I'm perfectly happy with my three computers at home running OS/2 Warp, and I know of a lot of cool software that's being developed and will be relaesed over the next six months (and beyond). In fact, I'm not even sure I'd buy Warp 5 if it did come out. If I did, it'd be mostly to show my support.
Second, even if Stardock did come out with a Warp 5 (or whatever they'd call it) client, it would be more for marketing than technology. Any Warp 5 client created would be based on the Warp 5 server, and the only thing that would be different between Warp 4 and Warp 5 is the addition of SMP support. Considering that only 1% (at most) of computers out there have SMP support, it wouldn't help much. There would be no real new technology in Warp 5. There won't be any support for Windows 95 apps or anything major like that. Anyone could take Warp 4 today and create a CD that installs XFree86, EMX, Gimp, Star Office, Object Desktop, and whatever else is currently available, and it would be identical to Stardock's Warp 5.
Why? Stardock, since they won't have the OS/2 source code, can only do so much (i.e. nothing). And if IBM releeased a new client instead, they WOULDN'T add any new features that don't already exist in Warp 5 server.
So in the end, 99% of everyone who uses Warp 4 and has downloaded the standard add-ons is already running Warp 5.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Good comments...but one point:
OS/2's DOS support is *NOT* emulation. It is a true VDM (this is a HARDWARE feature of the Intel chips).
You can have up to 254 VDM's (Virtual Dos Machines) running simultaneously under OS/2. The windows programs are the same.
In addition, you can run several Windows programs under the same VDM to save resources (basically acting like another computer running windows just like windows does) *OR* run troublesome apps in their *OWN SEPARATE* VDM.
Sure Worplace Shell was nice (even great for some things). However OS/2 itself had some annoying bugs (or behaviours). Hardware support was not very good, almost all recent sound cards don't work with it, many video cards don't either.
(Not In This Lifetime). The impression I have gotten is that IBM does not have full rights to release the source. Much of it is still co-copyrighted with Microsoft from the early days, and I would guess that some of it was purchased from third parties complete with a(n) NDA.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
One reason some of us think OS/2 is (or was, anyway) so important is because OS/2 was the very first technically strong
:-) Using the freeware TSHELL, you can bypass the need for PM and the WPS entirely and run OS/2 on fairly small/slow machines. :-) :-)
contender to Windows 3.1 for the desktop on Intel hardware, and was Windows NT's first strong (and superior, IMhO) opponent. It's a 32-bit operating
system with an extremely flexible and consistent desktop, enough native software to be useful, and very good DOS/Win 3.1 support. Plus lots of ported Unix stuff.
[1] Unlike Windows NT, the GUI in OS/2 is completely decoupled from the kernel, and the shell is actually useful.
[2] The default shell is a DOS derivative and superset. Other shells (4OS2, tsch, bash) are much better, IMhO.
[3] The OS/2 WorkPlace Shell was first released in 1992, long before Microsoft designed their limited WPS knock-off GUI. It's also extensible - programmers can create new desktop objects which inherit the chacteristics of the base object class they're based on. Very slick.
[4] I use it as a client, not a server, so I'm uncertain. But even the client version of OS/2 Warp 4 comes with a telnet server which is quite useful.
[5] Again, much of the interface in OS/2 predates Windows, so I consider Windows an OS/2 hack rather than the reverse. Since I use Xit, I have LOTS more buttons than a normal OS/2 setup.
I still use OS/2 as my main desktop OS at home (even though I also have Windows 95 and NT, Linux, FreeBSD, and BeOS) because I'm more comfortable in the WPS than in KDE, GNOME, or AfterStep under Linux, and because (like Linux) OS/2 has a "real" command prompt, so I can use text-based console-mode tools like lynx, pine, slrn, Yarn, FTE, or whatever in comfort. And it lets me play Quake and C&C in the background.
--
-Rich (OS/2, Linux, BeOS, Mac, NT, Win95, Solaris, FreeBSD, and OS2200 user in Bloomington MN)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
SCO Unix (SV-based, I think), or SCO Xenix (originally V7-based, I think, with System N stuff added on)?
Did Dynix run on PC's, or just on Sequent's machines (which were, as far as I know, not "IBM-compatible PCs", even if they did use 386's as processors)?
If you're thinking of BTOS, wasn't that actually Convergent Technology's CTOS, or something based on CTOS?
If so, did that run on PC's, or just on Convergent's x86 machine (which I also thought weren't PC-compatible, although they - or Burroughs or Unisys, depending on whether they bought Convergent before or after the merger - may later have made it run on PCs)?
Heck, Sun had a port of SunOS 4.0 to the Compaq Deskpro 386, or whatever it was called - they didn't sell it, though, as they were just using the Compaq as a development mule for the Sun386i; the latter was definitely not a PC-compatible machine (Sun-style boot monitor rather than a BIOS, for one thing). I don't think the port included SunView, and I've no idea whether it would've run on anybody else's PC. (In any case, it doesn't count very much, as Sun never sold 4.0[.x] on PCs.)
I'm not sure when the first Solaris 2.x release for x86 came out, but I think it might've been after 1990.
OS/2 Not to support Merced
Staff numbers slashed
No new OS/2 client
News of the death of OS/2 has been gathering for a while.
Personally I upgraded to Windows 3.1 from OS/2. I found OS/2 hard to install and upgrade, sketchily documented, bloated, and lacking in device drivers.
Not missed at all. It could have been good but lacked finish.
Actually, PM isn't very good. WPS is the best OOUI. You see, the Presentation Manager shell was Microsoft-written the 16-bit OS/2 1.3 GUI. You could later get it as an NT 3.x subsystem. The IBM-written Workplace Shell, which came with OS/2 2.0+, was an object-oriented successor that could run all of the old PM apps.
Of course, since the WPS was built to be compatible with PM-16 and to replace Microsoft's PM-32 in OS/2 2.0, various documents refered to WPS features and programming as PM features and programming. And the difference made little practical difference since the WPS program provided PM services to things like mshell anyway, and nobody bothered writing PM apps for 16-bit OS/2 anymore anyway.
But, it does make a major difference now, since the WPS is IBM code and thus could theoretically be released under an open-source license by IBM. Also, it (theoretically, at least) could be reengineered to work on top of X graphics services instead of PM graphics services, giving you an OOUI with all the features of both X and WPS...
There was some testimony some months ago about Microsoft demanding that IBM stop promoting OS/2 or be cut off from M$ products. The testimony came from a manager who was transferred before a decision was made, as far as he was aware. It is evident, in retrospect that IBM blinked in this regard. The decision not to continue with development is the outcome of that decision. OS/2 client also doesn't fit into their plans, IBM would like to see networks with OS/2 server and Workspace On Demand clients running Java programs and applets. On another note, Both KDE and Gnome could learn a lot about consistency, user configuration and Object Oriented User Interfaces by studying the behavior of OS/2's Workplace Shell.
Uh...that's completely wrong. Though I do appreciate your AC disclaimer :)
Everybody quit crying. OS/2 is not dead. Monday you will see a wonderful new application released.
I don't think those of you who rag on the WPS ever learned it. I happened to work on it in 1991/1992 so I am biased but I still think it is better than any Unix window manager or Microsoft product. We built it so you can do anything with it, that is why so many corporations will still use it for the next 5 years.
I'd like to agree, but I don't. Have you recently done a fresh install and tried to cope with the maze of improvements and the order in which they are applied? (I think you apply the MPTS upgrade ahead of the Java upgrade, and then install FPXX, and where the TCP/IP stack improvements go I can't recall.)
There is no disagreement on the small/useful/cool stuff in os/2, though. I have it loaded on a 486dx4/100, and the WPS is faster than XFree86 on SuSE 6.0 (it's a triple boot laptop) - and way, way ahead of X in usefulness.
Er, both the /. and Stardock stories simply say that the OS/2 *client* is not going to be updated. You then yourself say OS/2 isn't dead on the server end, just the client isn't being developed.
I find it amazing that a post made by someone who didn't read either the Slashdot write-up or the linked article got moderated up at all, much less so far (to a 4 as I reply), but I know how I'd M2 the moderation...
It seems an ok time for OS/2 to die, now that
:(
Linux is mature enough and X now has nice enough
Window Managers to make it usable by ex-OS/2
users. I made the switch a few years ago (a bit
after 4.0's release)...
OS/2, like any OS, had it's problems and it's
strengths. Let's go down the line with
NT, Linux, and OS/2...
Unix compatibility
OS/2 -- Pretty good. Could run X, and had the
EMX libraries to make porting Unix apps
fairly painless. Port of GCC available,
lots of tools available
NT -- Ok. No free X, but various libraries
(Cgywin, etc) make porting Unix apps less
painful. Lots of tools available
Linux -- Duh.
Windows Compatability
OS/2 -- Ok. Win32s and Win16 done well, a binary
converter that works well on some Win32
apps is available for free on the net
NT -- Duh.
Linux -- Ok. WINE and DosEmu do ok here.
Stability
OS/2 -- Ok. Better than Win95, and if you don't
consider the WPS hanging to be hanging
the OS, then the OS is very stable. Of
course, the WPS does hang sometimes, and
occasinally when the WPS databases get
corrupted, you need to do some fairly
ugly and destructive things to recover.
NT -- Good. Occasionally the OS hangs, but not
very often, and when it does, you normally
just need to reboot.
Linux -- Excellent. Uptime is frequently
measured in months.
Interface
OS/2 -- Highly customizable, very sophisticated,
and sometimes slow. For the adventurous,
it's possible to run other desktops apart
from the WPS (Some of which use PM, or you
can run X)
NT -- Much less customizable, very standardized,
and with the advent of IE4 integration,
often slow. It's possible to run other
desktops, but more difficult than under
OS/2 or Linux, and reduces system
functionality
Linux -- Highly customizable, no standard
interface. Networking functionality
built-in.
Overall, I'd have to say that the interface was
the high point of OS/2, and I kind of miss it...
Damn. My cat is sitting on my mouse and I can't
click submit.
*moves cat*
There we go
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Oh oh oh... and I suppose if ATM's ran the Linux kernel, you wouldn't be proud? :-)
How about Linux on hand-helds? How about your local vending machine? How about calling OS/2 "the Original Embedded OS"? It's still there, and that's the point.
This sort of Product Hell (we can't be bothered to improve our own product, and we don't want to anyone else improve it either) is one of the major bugaboos of proprietary software (think Amiga, think game emulators, think software from any defunct company) .. and one which OSS very nicely avoids.
I took a look at PC Dos 2000. Just looks like a repackage (actually the same package with a sticker slapped on) of PC Dos 7.0, which had the unfortunate distinction of releasing after Win95. -ex-DOS test lab employee at IBM in Boca Raton.
- They're too busy providing NT support services to want to compete with Microsoft.
- The consumer launch of Warp 3 (remmber the Italian nuns?) was a support nightmare, as their help desk was flooded with "How do I get DOOM to run with sound?" calls (OS/2 controls hardware access, like any good OS. DOOM, of course, used its own, non-compatible DOS sound drivers.)
- PC Company gets a much better preload discount on Windows if they don't produce or preload a competing OS.
IBM still supports OS/2 for existing, large customers in "vertical industries" like banking and insurance. This translates to things like JVM updates, Y2K and Euro fixes, and miscellaneous fixpacks. Significant updates for things a home user might want, like DIVE, USB (currently only on Intel and I believe VIA chipsets), and multimedia in general are probably not forthcoming.Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
IIRC, a number of ATM/MAC machines run OS/2. I don't remember why exactly, but there was something about needing a GUI OS that would also support X.25 protocols for interfacing with the mainframes at the bank HQ's over telco lines, and OS/2 was it.
At least in a straight VDM (not a VMB using a real boot image), the DOS kernel is actually a virtualized DOS interface lookalike which hooks into the OS/2 kernel.
That's why DOS program in a VDM can use the OS/2 mouse and sound drivers instead of having to load their own.
--
-Rich (OS/2, Linux, BeOS, Mac, NT, Win95, Solaris, FreeBSD, and OS2200 user in Bloomington MN)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
1. The os/2 command shell talks to an ansi terminal (and likewise, shell windows are ansi terminals).
2. telnetd is built-in with the tcp/ip package.
3. DOS sessions were given the same ansi-terminal capability several years ago. I'm not sure how far this goes, but possibly full-screen text dos apps can run over telnet.
(slashdot is really slow today, so I'm retrying - sorry for dupes)
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
In fact that is one of the reasons why I choose that particular bank. Just will not trust my money with a bank that uses any microsoft products.
I use the Credit Union (also in Canada), they used to use Os/2 and recently spent alot of (my) money to switch over to an NT based system. Just this morning I went in and the tellers machine constantly kept freezing, and problem that they never had until they switched to NT.
Not trying to be a troll here, but Os/2 is designed more towards the business side of things wich IMHO is why they never really tried to market it as a desktop OS.
Chris
What about using OS/2 as a "security through obscurity" measure?
IBM can't open-source all of it. The ability to run 16-bit DOS and Windows programs is due largely to the fact that IBM has the right to use the source code for 16-bit Windows. So a royalty is probably due to Microsoft for every copy of OS/2 that IBM sells! Furthermore, I doubt if MS is willing to let IBM put even old Windows source code out in widespread distribution, free or not. Maybe IBM could open-source the rest of it, like the object model implementation, ReXX, etc. You then perhaps could integrate these with Linux. Except that if they just turned down some people who wanted to pay real money to use OS/2 Client, and they're not developing it themselves, you're probably tilting at windmills. It's their right to throw it away if they want - at least until the copyright expires (long after we are dead). But what a shame!
We found Notes servers on OS/2 to be just about as brittle as on NT. In fact, Notes is noteworthy as one of very few ways to crash OS/2. (IIRC, the terrible Novell client was my other big problem here.)
No, it's like a Unix Zombie process--you can't kill it--it's already dead; but it just hangs around anyway.
what's wrong with 3000 registry entries?
I'm sure OS2 has many settings stored all over the place (just like linux).
The more entries, the more you can change for customisation.
at least we don't have to "Apply" before we "OK".
eh? Who pushes apply before ok unless they want to see the applied settings in place without closing the dialog.
OK does an apply then closes. Apply just does an apply.
YEESH.
ALL MICROSOFT SOFWARE DOES THIS.
Most windows applications (all i used) do this....those that don't prolly have old unix programmers
I don't know OS/2 at all, but I knew Rexx quite well as it was ported to the AmigaOS in 1987.
There it became standard, since maybe 1991 most of all non-command-line programs had a ARexx-Port. So it is possible to combine programs "from the inside" with around 200K for interpreter and library. Still miss it at Linux.
But the syntax is ugly, you're right...
I think SOMObjects is needed for open transport, but don't hold me to it. Disable the extension and see what breaks. I think you do need it though, it's a library and part of the mac os 8.5 extension package.
--- Don't ever trust a woman until she's dead- B.B. King
Hi there,
I am soon getting a 386/25mhz laptop with 8mb
RAM and 120mb hard disk space. I am entertaining
the idea of installing OS/2 on it (I have the
CD-ROM from years and years ago) instead of just
a basic Linux install.
Would there be a way for me to install OS/2 on
it, using floppies? The laptop doesn't have a
cdrom. Is this feasible at all?
If anyone has suggestions as to what I could do
with the laptop to make it functional, any
alternative options are very welcome. I'm just
looking for something to play IF's on around
campus, and to type up code wherever I feel like
it.
Thanks
Alex (mog@cland.net)
Except for Ask Slashdot and Your Rights Online(?), all Slashdot articles appear on the front page.
http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=os%2 F2
--
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
You're right. I wasn't specific enough. It was the first 32-bit OS written for the x86 "desktop" market. There were of course many other 32-bit OS's but none we'd see running Wordperfect.
It might have been the first 32-bit multi-tasking OS for "IBM-compatible PCs" - did it, in fact, come out before, say, System V/386? If not, then you might have to further qualify it as "the first 32-bit multi-tasking OS that might've become mass-market" (feel free to insert debate here about whether a PC UNIX, back then, was likely to become mass-market).Again, that's true. There were, I'm guessing Unix ports, but they weren't in a position to be mass-market. I couldn't consider Unix at the time a contender to running Wordperfect either.
In what way does that constitute "fragmentation"? I'd consider OS/2 "fragmented" only if there were multiple versions that weren't fully binary-compatible and weren't fully source-compatible (other than "not all applications built on/built for/written for release N run on Release N-1")I am refering fragmentation the same way the Microsoft does. Not the there isn't compatibility, either source or binary within multiple versions. MS would never claim that 98 and NT were fragmented. But MS claims that fragmentation is within a group of OS's that all seemingly exist for the same function. IE, the server market. According Microsoft, if I write a program and it doesn't compile under a different OS, then that OS is fragmented. I disagree, of course, but for MS's sake I acknowledge their logic. For in the desktop market, if I write an app, and try to compile it for another OS, if I can't compile it, it must be fragmented. So I can write an app for Linux and compile it under FreeBSD, Solaris, Unixware, BeOS, but it'll fail miserably under Windows. So Windows, according to the gospel of Microsoft, must be fragmented. Of course, according the the same logic OS/2 and MacOS are also fragmented. But, as I noted before, we can overlook that for the uses the OS/2 and Mac serve. Now, there are "libraries" to provide POSIX.1 compatibility to Windows and others, but that's not the Windows API, just a third party library.
Anyways, FWIW, I don't think fragmentation is a problem. I think it's good to have a little fragmention, but not as much as Windows has. But MS has blown their fragmentation PR up so much to get people scared of "Unix" and started using their much worse OS, that I've felt I've needed to start pointing out the real fragmentation where ever I had the opportunity.
-Brent--
Like others (or maybe not), I've used a number of GUI's over the years. Of everything I've used, IBM's Workplace Shell was the most intuitive and productive. What we really need right now is something similar to IBM's CUA guidelines to define user interaction across applications.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
Ah, yes. The anti-trust trial.
-Brent--
I agree. My first attitude about OS/2 was "It's from IBM -- the beast that birthed PS/2's and doesn't listen to anyone -- therefore, it's got to be crap."
Well, after being forced to do a technical review of it, I was stunned. It wasn't bad. In fact, it was kinda nice. It managed memory -- even in DOS sessions -- better than our company's commercial memory manager! The verdict by management: Ignore it, and maybe it'll go away.
After the review, I bought a copy of OS/2 for myself and even used a few betas. Since it didn't crash as much as Windows, I had no reason not to use it primarily and then finally exclusively. I even used the voice control software that came with it for a while, and bought programs and utilities from Lotus, Stardock, and a group of smaller companies.
A few years pass, and it became painfully obvious that IBM wouldn't or couldn't do anything with it...so I slowly switched over to Linux, keeping a spare computer with OS/2 on it. A few months ago, I backed up the partition and moved over to Linux exclusively. As my friend with the Amiga showed; it's not worth trying to convince a company to do something with thier own products.
I'd still like many of the features that the Workplace Shell (WPS) has now, integrated into Linux. Too bad IBM won't release the source code for it!
One day I was in our building's cafeteria sometime between breakfast and lunch, and the servicemen were there working on the teller machine. I stopped to watch for just a moment, and was rather surprised to see an OS/2 boot screen come up!
:-) I had to smile -- I ran OS/2 several years ago and still remember it fondly. In fact I keep thinking I ought to pull out the old CD and reinstall it onto one of the spare, older machines I have laying around, but then I think of what my wife would do to me if another computer invaded the computer lab, er, living room.
I must have had quite an interesting look on my face because the repairman put his left hand over the screen, put his right index finger over his mouth and gave me an elaborate "Ssssssssh!"
It was just nice to see that OS/2 had worked itself back onto campus.
--
Someone you trust is one of us.
I've thought about doing this for awhile. I have been lacking the time to learn the required skills. If there is interest in getting a team together to design a SOM/WPS system for Linux, I'm game. I'll even have some time to work on it soon. ;)
This is the one thing I would want to make my Linux experience complete. KDE and GNOME are nice, but neither holds a candle to WPS.
Hello? Not to be argumentative, but isn't what is happening to OS/2 precisely what makes closed-source software bad?
BeOS is closed source, but it has a future.
No. BeOS may have a future. Because it is closed-source, you can never be sure of its future.
Only open-source software is assured of a future, as long as anyone is still interested in it.
IBM, and others like them, are never going to sucker me into closed-source operating systems again.
--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page
OS/2 was a great OS, but it has only a small fraction of the market share that MacOS has. Furthermore, OS/2 is dying while MacOS is growing its market share.
Given that, now that Sun has bought Star Division and StarOffice, why do they continue to develop the OS/2 version and make it available for free download, while at the same time kill their MacOS version?
I just don't understand Scooter (Scott McNealy :) sometimes.
Not technical advantage? What about WorkPlaceShell,
SOM, OpenDOC, ExtendedAttributes? If only
GNOME could evolve to provide these features...
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
"OS/2 is not a viable business model" :-) "Linux is not a good car" :-P
OS/2 is not a business model!
It's a damned operating system!!!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
This reminds me of the (still active) Win32 -> OS/2 32. Since Win32 API was basically the OS/2 32 bit API (but more 16bit, since MS molested it for its Win16 upgrade woes). I'm sure something like iBCS would work with the OS/2 LX executable format (there was another one for 16-bit OS/2 Exes, I've forgotten it though).
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I don't think they say a single OS - i.e., a single set of CD's that come in a box from vendor XXX - is fragmented.
As far as I know, what they're saying is that "UNIX", in the sense of "all the various OSes offering a UNIX-compatible API", is fragmented, in that you may have to do porting work to move an application between Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, AIX, etc. (because the application may, for example, use stuff beyond the "UNIX-compatible" part of the API, i.e. extensions present in vendor A's OS but not present in vendor B's OS or present in vendor B's OS but with a different API).
If so, they're right. (But, then again, as you note, the same applies to the set of OSes offering a "Win32-compatible API", if, for example, there are APIs present in Windows 98 but not present in NT 4.0.)
However, as you don't have, say, OS/2 from IBM and a mostly-compatible-but-not-exactly-the-same OS/2 from the other company that was involved in OS/2 development, OS/2 isn't "fragmented" - something can be "fragmented" only if there are multiple fragments, and there aren't multiple flavors of OS/2 out there, as far as I know.
Neither Windows nor OS/2 claim to be "UNIX-compatible", so the fact that Windows OT and OS/2 don't offer POSIX.1 compatibility doesn't render them "fragmented" (and the limited POSIX.1 compatibility in NT is sufficiently limited that I, at least, don't consider it one of the fragments of fragmented UNIX; if you add Interix, maybe).
Rexx is dreadful, as are most scripting languages. In general, they have ad-hoc, inconsistent sytax, second-guess you all the time and are generally kludges of the highest order.
This is not merely a criticism of Rexx, but all shell scripting languages. I'd sooner wheel out my c compiler and write some proper code.
As for anything interactive, you just can't beat FORTH.
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
IBM can't kill OS/2 for a simple reason, there are serveral large IBM accounts that have 10,000's of seats of OS/2 still in place. With no plans to migrate. Just as their are many thousands of NeXT machines still running some major financial institutions.
Cheers,
WFE
===========
Good thing modern MacOS is so much less cryptic and easier to administer than other operating systems....
"An error of type -34123 occurred in application <unknown> -- ( Restart )"
If that's your attitude about IBM, then you don't know IBM that well, or never bothered to pay attention.
Their problem is that they can't think properly for the PC mindset. PS/2's were (are) great machines. They still run, to this day. Microchannel Architecture might be annoyingly expensive to deal with, but without it, where would we be? Still setting jumpers? No thanks.
What about the fact that you can strip a PS/2 down to nothing in about two minutes? Well, I can. I collected those suckers for that reason. Simple to deal with. IBM's always been on the cutting edge for anything PC related, but I'll be damned if they know what to do with that once it's out. Same thing happened to OS/2. People loved it, it was vastly superior, and IBM couldn't figure out how to make that work. Instead of realizing that the PC market is in for something cheap and lowering the prices (don't even TRY buying a microchannel sound card), they kept high prices on excellent products, killing it off. Since it wasn't selling, they started losing interest. Yet again, IBM loses because of an interest in profit margins higher than the national debt.
It's a shame when engineers design great stuff to be sold by senseless execs.
Christopher Kalos
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
OS/2 PPC was released, I have a copy, IBM however decided against marketing it. It was not a straight port, it had a microkernel amongst other improvments, all academic now of course
>Microsoft was smart enough to realize that people were reluctant
> to change from DOS to OS/2 even though it was better. They also
>realized that people wanted the GUI stuff, but didn't care about
>the other advanced stuff of OS/2 (mostly because it also meant increased
>hardware requirements). So what did they do?
>Get rid of OS/2 to IBM, and develop Windows. 1.0 [...]
IBM shot OS/2 in the foot by insisting that it support the 286. That hurt the OS and greatly delayed it's launch.
As far as IBM "getting rid" of IBM and OS/2 --
Somewhere on an old page at Jerry Pournelle's sprawling website at www.jerrypournelle.com is an account of Bill Gate's public embarrasment at Microsoft's big Media Event for the roll-out of Microsoft/IBM's spiffy new operating system -- OS/2.
The featured speaker for the evening was from IBM, but when came time for the main event, he gave short-shrift to his "speach", and just... walked out. Pournelle was at the table with Gates & saw his shock. From then on, Microsoft's focus was on Windows. IBM taught Microsoft a lot about business relationships...
As far as IBM and OS/2 goes, I doubt that IBM (as a corporation) really cared all that much about selling OS/2 into the home or very small business market. They wanted to sell bigger iron and OS/2 server to corporations who would buy hundreds or thousands of OS/2 desktop licenses.
Selling/marketing to individuals? IBM never has understood the turf...
That's amusing... I remember that back in the days when I used OS/2, that was the sensitive OS, that would refuse to work if the hardware was faulty. I got constant blue screens from OS/2 until I replaced my SIMMs, which were somehow misplaced.
It was actually touted as a feature. A friend of mine, who used Windows '95, had lost her motherboard because her CPU fan didn't work. After having told the story in an online forum, a member of TeamOS/2 commented that had she used OS/2, she would have noticed the problem immediately, as the OS would refuse to boot. It's very true. My motherboard was saved from the same fate when I noticed frequent NT crashes.
I don't think it's a very good idea in the long run, to ignore heat sink problems and just let the computer run.
- Ido
I mentioned closed-source only to point out that particular, clear advantage of Linux over OS/2. I would also imagine that OS/2's TCO is also higher than Linux' because of licensing costs, as well as the fact that at least as much user training is req'd.
The key word here is "was"
I recall using the Beauty of OS/2...
In one window I ran my BBS, in another window I ran my BBS's second line, in the Top window I played Wing Commander. and I could do all that while formatting floppies in the background (TRUE async I/O) on a 386/20 with 8 megs of ram.
It's been a long time since I used an OS/2 box.
:)
Microsoft was smart enough to realize that people were reluctant to change from DOS to OS/2 even though it was better. They also realized that people wanted the GUI stuff, but didn't care about the other advanced stuff of OS/2 (mostly because it also meant increased hardware requirements). So what did they do? Get rid of OS/2 to IBM, and develop Windows. 1.0 was a bad joke, 2.0 wasn't even funny, and to cut a long story short, by Windows 3.1 they had a project that people actually wanted to buy. Observe a strategy here?
It's bells & whistles vs. os features again.
Customers wanted the bells & whistles of a modern GUI, but didn't bother about a new solid OS, and really wanted DOS compatibility. So Microsoft gave them just that. In the meantime they hacked together NT, which was better, and slapped on a similar interface, and got the windows users to use it as a server (familiarity being a major selling point).
Now that most software basically runs on both Windows and Windows NT, they can make the transition to a 'real' OS after all. Too bad that it took them so long and the damn OS got bloated along the way.
So what about linux, xBSD and whatnot, you say?
Consider the opposite: Power users. They want a rock solid server and they don't care if it doesn't have the bestest GUI -- or ANY GUI for that matter. After all, if someone wants to click-through system administration, he souldn't be doing it in the first place. Well, it kinda worked. The reduced hardware requirements of linux/freebsd to get full blown servers up did attract and continue to attract interest even from die hard MS fans. Heck, even Microsoft themselves are using unix for hotmail. It now even reached the point that many not-really-computer-literate persons are using it at home. That's the customers prefering features over bells and whistles buying it here.
I can see the percentage of those sensible users increasing and the percentage of users that only care about bloat decreasing. Add a bit of bloat like gnome & kde, and halfpoint there needs of users & features of free OSs meet.
All I'm waiting for now is for that moron-proof desktop environment to kill of Win2K as a desktop OS too.
Win2K will be a biggest disaster than Y2K, as they say, and lets be frank, they made a 30 million lines of code monster which should be hard to maintain, and linux/bsd hackers are more than the whole population of the state of washington
just my 0.02 EUR
-W
[1] It seems to use the same type of shell as NT..i.e. a command shell. [2] It seems to have a DOS-like command set.
Get it right. NT uses the same type of shell as OS/2. OS/2 was supposed to be the successor to DOS which is why the command syntax is so similar and NT was supposed to be the portable OS/2 v3. This common heretage explains the similarities. Don't like CMD.EXE (I did), go get something else from Hobbes.
[3] It has a windows like GUI..more Win95/NT like than 98 but nothing like X.
You've got it ass backwards. Explorer (and the modern MacOS 8.x/9 Finder) is a sorry, mostly cosmetic rip off of the OS/2 WorkPlace Shell. WPS is based on an IBM specification called Common User Access (CUA) and specifically CUA '91. Even in it's embrionic form it was in, it's the most flexible, fluid GUI there's been and better than *anything* I expect to see in the next 5 years.
[4] does it even have remote administration ? I saw no such thing.
Obviously you were using the early desktop version of Warp not Warp Connect (circa '94?) which was the fat client and included TCP/IP, peer services, etc. and even modem sharing.
[5] Its interface leaves much to be desired (kludgy win/dos hack were the first impression i got..followed by...what the heck do these weird buttons do?)
Gotta put in context that there was no use for the second mouse button back when 2.0 came out in March '92. IBM's configuration was extremely easy to use and if you didn't like it, just go to the Mouse 'control panel' and reconfigure to your liking. The only thing I ever changed was the setting for clicking to rename objects. I always changed it to two-buttons down instead of the standard alt + click.
Im not trying to troll here..i'd like some informed opinion by poeple who've used it - why is it so great ? how is it better than UNIX ?
GUI (see above). Compatibility (need DR-DOS, MS-DOS 3.x, PC-DOS 4? Have them load each in a separate virtual DOS machine). Configuration was easier than UNIX (the balance between the GUI 'control panels' and config.sys was always easy for me to work with and the quality of on-line help was excellent). Cost vs. comparable UNIX. Resource requirements were far below comparable UNIX setup. Stability.
IBM OS/2 was near idealic **balance** of being powerful yet making that power accessible and seamless to the typical user. Windows of any sort isn't that. MacOS X might be that someday. Linux is no where near that despite your own propsganda. UNIX is an extreme, not a balance.
Yes. Precisely. And I'm not saying that closed-source software *isn't* bad. Windows is another good example of closed source software that's bad. Microsoft has done a good maintaining binary support in it's OS. But not source code support. You are locked into rewriting your source code every few years. It's not like dropping an OS all together, but may as well be.
All in All, closed source is bad. However, if OS/2 were actively developed there would be a market for it. People would use it. It may not be the best development decision, but it's better then choosing Microsoft. :-)
No. BeOS may have a future. Because it is closed-source, you can never be sure of its future. Only open-source software is assured of a future, as long as anyone is still interested in it.True again. We don't know what will happen in the future. A "road map" is hardly convincing, when dealing with the future. The only way to be certain that you have a viable solution is when you "own" that solution. As you said, if you product is based on Linux and everyone loses interest, you "own" Linux and can maintain it because you have the source. As OS/2 shows us, if you don't "own" the software, when a company drops it, you're sunk.
IBM, and others like them, are never going to sucker me into closed-source operating systems again.Good for you. Unfortunately, I only come close to that ideal. :-) But I am careful which closed source OS's I use. And always try to use something that I know will be there as long as I need it whenever possible
-Brent--
My company still uses OS/2 on some servers. Why? Because it works. It does the job. It never (NEVER) crashes. And its DOS compatability is excellent (if you have any stupid DOS programs that you ever need to use, you should be using OS/2).
I had the assignment of upgrading all of these servers for Y2K, and I was dreading downloading all of the fixpacks and doing the painful installs (I remember fixpacks from the 2.1 days, and they were often PAINFUL!). Then I found out about the Warp UP CD from Indelible Blue, Inc. This single disk contained all of the latest fixpacks for OS/2 and its components (like MPTN and TCP/IP), plus updates to runtime DLLs (like VX-Rexx and EMX 0.9d) and software like Netscape 4.6. All with a easy to use GUI interface.
Sorry for the testimonial, here, but this product saved me days of works. If you use OS/2, get it! I want Warp 5 as much as the next guy, but I think that getting all of the updates in one place is as good as it gets (until IBM gets its head out of its ass).
My word processor was written by Stanford Professor Donald Knuth. Who wrote yours?
Subject says it all. The big attraction for me was Warp 5's journaled file system. But who knows? Maybe it will come out in a Warp 4 fixpack.
SOMObjects is part of OpenDoc, which even though development has froze, is still in the MacOS.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
This is an interesting post but I notice that IBM only "indicated" to Wardell that there would be no OS/2 client. I don't find this "indication", as observed by Wardell, to be as good an informtion source as an actual statement or quote from IBM. There is no indication that IBM has appointed Wardell to be its spokesman. Is IBM saying anything? Do they know about this?
I have been using OS/2 from 1993 until now both for servers and my private PC. I changed to Linux on my private PC in 1997, and still feel familiar with OS/2 as I still use it on servers.
1) and 2) The OS/2 command shell is greatly enforced by the REXX command interpreter which is far more powerful than the silly DOS batch language. OS/2 can be run from text mode only if you want to.
3) The Workplace Shell is the best OO graphical shell I have seen until now. Windows 95/98 is a bad copy of it.
4) It has remote administration by means of command line tools. It has a telnetd service that I have not tried, but I believe it is functional.
5) It was easier to use than contemporary Unixes for former DOS users. It was the best Windows around 1994. OS/2 had real and stable multitasking unlike the Microsoft products. It has never become as bloated as Windows 95/98/NT/2k.
Drawbacks are:
- IBM that seems to have agreed with Microsoft to silently kill OS/2 since 1995.
- The similarity with DOS in the silly drive letter scheme in disks and partitions.
- Lack of real support by IBM has marginalized the OS and made it difficult to get hardware and good apps for it compared to mainstream OSes.
I think KOM/OpenParts is a good place to start. I doubt if IBM is going to release any source code related to SOM or OS/2 in general. The KOM/OpenParts frameworks are like the OpenDoc frameworks. Bringing SOM into Linux now would just add another technolgy that doesn't fit what's being developed. Bring KOffice out and tune KOM/OpenParts and then you have a tested foundation for bringing SOM/WPS features into KDE or a new desktop but leveraging the work of KOM/OpenParts. The WPS rocks but reality is that starting from scratch and without existing development in mind would fracture the Linux development env more then KDE and GNOME have already.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Actually, the NT kernel was the first (and debatably only) kernel MS ever designed themselves. They hired off all the VMS guys to do it.
Granted, these are better than Windows. But just about all the things you described are implemented in GNOME, X, and Linux. GMC, for example, supports VFS (FTP as directories, in addition to tar files, and many other things). Perl may be embeddable, but Perl alone will always be faster, plus you get choice (of course, I don't know REXX, so I can't judge its capabilities). You can do more than change colours using GTK themes. The containers do pretty much the same thing as Bonobo and GNOME's session data. And in UNIX, everything has a very specific location; there's no need to move system files around.
*sigh* I remember the first time I used OS/2. I was a big time Windoze fan at the time and my coworkers were begining to think I was evil. However, it was about two weeks into using OS/2 that I first uttered the phrase "I can't believe I ever used Windows, it sucks!". OS/2 was my OS of choice, but then I was introduced to Linux. Never the less, I still get all teary eyed when I think about my first OS/2 experience. I am really gonna miss it.
Not sure its entirely dead. Went to use the ATM/MAC/MoneyMachine/whatever ya call it, here at work yesterday. Sitting on the screen is ??? What is that? Wait that's OS2. The MAC is running OS2! And the machine is 6mos old. A First Union machine. So a big bank is still rolling ATMs with OS2 as its OS. So I don't think you should ring that death bell quite yet.
-cpd
Just wondering why everyone considers OS/2 to be so important....The last time i tried it i gathered the following impressions about it (OS/2 Warp ..thats ver.3 i think?) :
[1] It seems to use the same type of shell as NT..i.e. a command shell.
[2] It seems to have a DOS-like command set.
[3] It has a windows like GUI..more Win95/NT like than 98 but nothing like X.
[4] does it even have remote administration ? I saw no such thing.
[5] Its interface leaves much to be desired (kludgy win/dos hack were the first impression i got..followed by...what the heck do these weird buttons do?)
Im not trying to troll here..i'd like some informed opinion by poeple who've used it - why is it so great ? how is it better than UNIX ?
Many large companies have a large investment in OS/2 and it will go on for a while. It is still my main OS.
The OS/2 consultant rates will go higher.
We will see!
Injured software engineer wins against Mattel!
As for getting a copy of OS/2, there are plenty of options. Visit http://www.os2ss.com/Information/NewUser s/.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
OS/2 is not a viable business model, we know that. I'm posting from Warp4 (merely because I happen to be here), and still recall buying (for CDN$200 of my own money), my copy of 2.0 to replace Win3.1 which came with my 486 and was crashing on the CanadaPhone CD because of memory mis-management.
If they open-source it, do you think it would fly then? Probably not. Linux has taken up that target audience. Although, it sure would teach a lot of people about proper device and memory management! You just GOTTA see the page algorithms and task dispatcher! Right out of the Big Iron manuals!
The "OS/2 client" is now Workspace On Demand, and works very nicely as a thin-client on an OS/2 Warp5 Server, thank you very much.
Long Live Linux!
Ken
Yawn.....
Brad is a personal friend of mine. So I honestly take offense at your comment.
His choice of mailer/newsreader stems more from what he's working on at the moment. Unfortunately his passion for OS/2 doesn't lead him down the path of stupidity. It's a marvel to me at the abuse that he puts up with on a day to day bass from the OS/2 community, and yet his company hasn't exited the OS/2 market yet, though as a bystander, and a recovering OS/2 user myself, I think he's pushing his support of OS/2 beyond prudency. But then we don't want to talk about money in this market, after all making money isn't the issue, those that make the most become villians and those that toil in obscurity make enough to live on..
News of the death of OS/2 has been gathering for a while.
News of OS/2's death has been gleefully pronounced by the media on practically an annual basis for quite a number of years. They've been wrong all along, why should this time be any different?
I've yet to see an official IBM statement to this regard, and as I mentioned before in this forum, IBM does not talk about their future plans. The new software and fix packs being released by IBM tell me that they are still supporting OS/2.
Personally I upgraded to Windows 3.1 from OS/2. I found OS/2 hard to install and upgrade, sketchily documented, bloated, and lacking in device drivers.
Personally, when I first tried running Linux it was extremely hard to install, and likewise the documentation was hard to follow and the device driver situation was very poor. As with Linux, this has changed in the current version of OS/2. There are lots of device drivers, a quick check of IBM's OS/2 Device Driver Pack reveals:
6332 products listed in this database.
55 NEW products added in the last 30 days.
947 product entries have been UPDATE in the last 30 days.
So, as I've said before - 55 new and 947 updated device drivers says a lot more about IBM's commitment to OS/2 than the lack of a formal announcement. As for bloated, sure it required more memory than Windows 3 did. That's not to hard to understand considuring that OS/2 included Win3 as a subset of it's features...
Not missed at all. It could have been good but lacked finish.
This statement leads me to beleive that you've gave up on OS/2 before learning the WPS. The only finish it lacked was a spit-polish on the graphics with Pretty icons and such. Microsoft has known all along that most people want something that looks good rather than something that works well.
My first experience with OS/2 was back with version 2.1 when I was looking for a better multi-tasker than DesqView for my BBS. It handled all of my needs better than I thought possible. It also taught me how expressive an Object-Oriented user interface could be. Boy I'll miss it. :(
James
Monterey is probably its replacement.
You take offense to what?
It sounds like it's time to roll up your sleeves and start coding instead of sitting back and whining. Linux has any number of window managers. An OS/2-like one would be an asset.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
even though IBM decided to stop supporting the
home user, I'm still gonna use it and gonna keep
kicking out programs like I usually do =)
- dink ( http://dink.org )
p.s. check my site for some of my proggys
No, people have not been flaming Brad. Only one person has been flaming him (Tim Martin), a guy who flames people who don't use OS/2 100% of the time (but doesn't use OS/2 for his own web server). It may seem like people because Tim Martin likes to create new personas on throwaway accounts to make it look like he is not a lone kook. People have generally caught on to the fact that if someone posts (1) who has never posted before according to deja.com, and (2) is coming in from the same dial-up Tim Martin uses, it is probably another one of his creations.
In a previous job, I used to design cross-platform code that ran under OS/2 as well as 16-bit and 32-bit windows. OS/2's API was, overall, the best designed of the three, IMHO, and I spent a lot of time trying to work around the shortcomings in the other two. Oh well...
Eric
--
"Free your code...and the rest will follow."
Be who you are...and be it in style!
- OS2/Windows Converter? - well I'll be, OS/2 coverage
:-) - QuickieWorld - no OS/2 coverage, must have hit on the OS-Wars T-Shirt
- Cool PC Cases - no OS/2 reference
- Win32-OS/2 source to be released - well I'll be, OS/2 coverage
:-) - Friday Quickies - a link to a non-OS/2 article at OS/2 E-Zine
- Linux in an OS/2 DOS box! - gee, an April fools joke. I suspect it only made it due to the Linux factor
- RedHat at ZDNet - no OS/2 reference
Wow, your right. There has been OS/2 coverage, an April fools joke and two articles about the Win32-OS2 converter, with lots of discussion about how it could be utilized by Linux users. I wonder how I could have overlooked themI loved OS/2, using it since 1993 with 2.0 and never having had an actual windows system. (my first windows experience was in os/2 2.0). It was a wonderful step up from DOS + Desqview or DOS + Terminate, but that's where it ended.
The WPS was very cool when it didn't get screwed up. Ultimately I became a unix lover. The -many- DOSisms that OS/2 (and now NT) carry on such as drive letters, backslash path seperators, and case insensitive filenames to the point where tons of otherwise useful utilities become utterly useless as they convert everything to upper case when editing config files (this wreaked havoc on the environment variable settings for ports of unix software such as the GNU compilers and XFree86).
To top it off IBM, as a whole, just didn't care about users. That was the final nail in the coffin no matter how hard we wanted them to like us.
A badly managed, mis serviced-packed Warp install is still on my hard drive awaiting nuking for disk space. The last time I used it was to run TurboTax. Now we have vmware, I'll be buying that around tax time of Wine isn't up to running a tax prep. program without crashing.
Face it, even if you love what OS/2 did and was, its way to out of date today. Dump the old DOSisms and move onto a free unix for real freedom from the shackles of a company.
My understanding is that the version of OS/2 being used for many embedded applications such as ATMs is actually Microsoft OS/2 1.x. (The reason being that the application was designed for 16-bit OS/2 1.x and only MS still sells that version. And yes Microsoft actually does still sell OS/2 if you can find the right person.)
Don't forget that OS/2 was the *only* modern operating system available for PC hardware in the late-80s and early-90s. Thus it got 'designed in' to certain applications in that period. (It's also why you can find old OS/2 386 machines running mainframe gateways and the like in the corners of server rooms around the world.)
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
you could also mention DR with DOS & GEM; all of these companies could have succeded and all of them did marketing that ranged from negligible through stupid to insane. (Remember IBM's "NUN'S LIKE IT!" commercial? Just what power users and corporate management want to know.) Now that Apple has started marketing which is mediocre (cute commercials), rather than suicidal (canceling licensing) they have begun to recover. (Of course, Apple doesn't have much to recover to in this decade.)
well if IBM is tired of OS/2, maybe they just need to make it Open Source and release all of the source code to the public.
Well since I can't get a copy of OS/2, any clues how we can learn PM? :) If you have a website or something where I can go to get the gist of PM and its features, that would be awesome. I have heard a lot of good things about it for a very long time, but the closest I have ever been to an OS/2 machine was talking to the desk clerk at the airport (and she wouldn't let me touch it! ;-))
I still spend more time in OS/2 than Linux. I like Linux, but I get frustrated that I can't drag things with the right mouse button. Linux developers seem intent on reproducing Windows way of doing things instead of the "proper" way that OS/2 uses. Maybe in 5 years, Linux will have an object oriented interface as good as the Workplace Shell with Stardock's Object Desktop. That said, I would probably spend more time in Linux if there were an X mail client as good as PMMail, a newsreader as good as Emtec News and an FTP client as good as Emtec FTP. I paid good money for those! The mail client is the most important. It's sad that IBM will not let Stardock market an updated OS/2 client, but we've known for years that IBM doesn't give a damn about us long time OS/2 end users. I know that Linux is bound to become my main OS because of this, but it is so hard to give up the WPS. So many good ideas get lost by the wayside because of proprietary software.
IBM let some large customers dictate OS/2 design and destiny. That compromised its integrity. There are PM bugs that had to be propagated because of backward compatibility. There are input queue defects that were never fixed becuase of compatibility. The clean API and robustness came into question. To be a good OS/2 programmer you had to be an "OS/2 hacker" not a hacker but a specific type of hacker that knew the tricks of OS/2. A clean API doesn't mean anything if there are special cases.
I left when I noticed that getting OS/2 apps built wasn't as important as porting GPLed apps, X based apps and doing ports of windows apps. IBM never supported the OS/2 developer community and didn't even provide compilers for a long time, all while paying some companies to port applications while not even acknowledging others. It couldn't take off. You have to support yourself, OS/2 was wonderful at running windows and DOS applications but that isn't enough.
IBM used too many things from too many different people, it will never be opensourced or GPLed simply because of the legal complexity. There isn't enough money to replace the parts MS owns. This is something that is currently being investigated within IBM, there are a lot of products which simply cannot be opensourced for that reason.
It's sad but I can't say it wasn't comming. On the other hand, we've learned a tremendous amount from it. I think that Linux is on an unstoppable course, it's developer friendly and rich, it has a community of users and believers who get things done with or without the help of others (no relying on WinOS2 here...) and KDE and GNOME are going places IBM never made it with WPS and OpenDoc. Give it another year or two and you won't miss WPS at all. Plus being part of the linux community is about 100x better than anything I ever experienced on OS/2, the OS/2 community acted like they were the underdogs and couldn't change it. Linux is going to change the rules before the community admits defeat. How's that expression go? The king is dead, God save the king... If you've been using OS/2 a lot then you probably use a lot of GNU stuff already, you're ready for it.
Please tell me you are just trolling. My faith in humanity is dwindling here.
Or does the guy just not practice what he preaches? Why would a OS/2 guy use Windows. Oh, I know, probably because his company forces him to. I hate that. In my old job, everyone in the company was *required* to use Lotus Notes for email...ouch.
I first ran across OS/2 when my then-employer brought in v1.3 for LAN server purposes ('91?). I've used it on and off ever since (I like it enough that I still run v4 on one of my home machines) and my biggest complaint with it is that IBM doesn't seem to have the least bit of interest in actually marketing it. I know they still use it internally (the new CMOS box where I work runs its system console under v4), and there are still people running it, but there seems to be no effort to "sell" the product. I read an article by Jerry Pournelle a year ago or so (archived at http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/98/0514/ icbusiness2.asp) where he talked about the history of OS/2 and Windows. Repeatedly, IBM made decisions that pretty much prevented OS/2 from ever catching on.
Now, in spite of people trying to support the product and encourage its use, IBM has decided again to keep OS/2 down.
Maybe the same people at IBM who decided that the PC would never sell in the "home-use" market are the same people that are making the big decisions about OS/2....
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
Look, get it straight, OS/2 isn't dead yet.
These are the facts, judge for yourself.
1) No new client is to be released AT THIS TIME.
2) OS/2 v.5 SERVER (not client) was just released this year.
3) Fixpacks, updates and new drivers CONTINUE to be made available to users for FREE by IBM.
4) You can still purchase OS/2 v4. It continues to be a very viable solution to get your work done, for at least the next year or 2, if not more. (If ya wanna play games, grab yourself a Dreamcast)
=> OS/2 doesn't NEED a client refresh. Just more drivers. The old, base V4 already has support for OpenGL, USB, whatever, you name it. SMP is missing , but as someone pointed out, how many client machines have SMP on board?
And lastly, there ain't gonna be no code released because IBM still owns OS/2 and continues to make gobs of money of OS/2.
This user here ain't movin' off OS/2 until a suitable replacement comes along. Linux, IMHO, is not mature enough for Joe-Average user to use (what? 30min to recompile my kernel for sound card support? NO THANKS!). BeOS? Not enough apps.
OS/2's object-oriented PM+WPS is by far, the most advanced UI still around. I use MacOS, X, and Win95 daily as well, and they do not compare. Period.
Those of you working on Linux, THIS is what you should be aiming for.
>Presentation Manager still has (IMHO) the best OOUI out there.
Right on Bro! Attention all you GUI developers... if you haven't used and learned PM, then you don't know sh*t about REAL Object Oriented GUI's!
Ken
I've been using OS/2 at work now for several years, and while my overall impression of OS/2 is mixed, I have to say WorkPlace Shell (especially with Stardock's Object Desktop improvements) is just plain brilliant. I have used many OSes and desktop GUIs over the years, and none of them measure up to WPS+OD. When OS/2's GUI gets lost in the sands of time, it will be a step backwards for the computing world. What a shame. :(
Oh well, at least they can't keep people from using OS/2 version 4. I keep waiting for the situation to arise at work where I'm forced to run some Win32-only program and finally have to do without OS/2. But even after all these years, it still hasn't happened. (There was a close call a few years ago, but the software in question turned out to be useless.) That leads me to believe it's going to take OS/2 a long time to completely fade away.
---
Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Well, it's a shame that it has happened, but it was unfortunately inevitable. I used to use OS/2, but gave up after Merlin--such a new OS with so little hardware support. But I always missed the PM. And I would love a chance at implementing it.
SOM is basically CORBA. If you know CORBA, then you know quite a bit already about the paradigm of SOMObjects and the PM. I know that GNOME uses an ORB (although a limited one). Perhaps some of us old OS/2ers could start putting our efforts into something like GNOME or something new entirely?
Again, it is just a crying shame to have watched OS/2 die such a slow death over the past four years. It's almost a relief; now we can get on with our lives. Instead of hoping against all hope that IBM might see the light, we can get down to the business of simply doing it better.
Farewell, OS/2.
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs."
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
I work @ big blue(i even used to work on OS/2 TCP, no flames please!) OS/2 is not dead or close to it. There's not a whole lot of development going on the client side, but the server side is making lots of blue money. And lots of big customers are still using it. Just b/c your neighbor doesn't run it at his house, doesn't mean his it's not in his IS data center at work churnning away. My own team got paid a cool million to write a interface for os/2. Like I said not much new development, but if a customer is willing to fund it we'll do it! (about dos, check out PC DOS 2000, still alive thanks to some bucks or Y2k lawsuits i dunno) http://www.software.ibm.com/os/dos/
I would say it is a sad thing. One operating system less. Diversity in the computing area is nice thing. M$ always pushes it's monster OS (Yes Monter !).
Where OS/2 required 6 files (1 EXE, 1 DLL, 1 Binary Config File, 1 Humand readable config file and 2 helper EXEs) and 400 Kb of harddisk space, the equivalent under a M$ OS (DO$ or MT, Winblows 9x is basically with some itsy bitsy graphics) requires 450 files, 25 Mb space on harddisk (don't ask about memory) and 3000 registry entries. Where is the gain ? intel is happy, and the hard disk makes are happy.
Has someone started to developed a environment under Linux to run OS/2 binaries (16 & 32 bits, including PM apps). Tons of **stable** apps would instantly come to linux.
My company, as a lot other in germany, sticks to OS/2 for its operative environment. Winblows MT is just for the managers that want to play with a mouse.
Has anyone asked IBM to release portions of OS/2 under the GPL, so that it can be combined with Linux?
Until IBM itself stops using OS/2 there will always be support for the product. And, much to the suprise of even IBM, their new Server for eBuisness has be selling far beyond expectation. I support OS/2 on a daily basis and it crashes much less than all of my windows clients!IMHO OS/2 is much more stable than any win32 Client. And it's much better as a network client. Granted it's not as pretty and it's a bear when it does break.
And if you want a real challange, get OS/2 running under VMWare...Now that's fun!
"When I look down I miss all the good stuff, When I look up I trip over things..."-Ani DiFranco
presumably meaning in the GNOME source tree.
There's also a page on the KDE developer's site with links to KDE style guide information.
(I think the IBM CUA spec may have influenced Motif and its style guide; given that GTK+'s look and feel somewhat resembles that of Motif, and that Qt offers a Motif L&F as one of its options, and that I think it may also have influenced Windows' style and style guide, which has, in turn, influenced the styles of various UNIX GUI projects, it may be that the CUA has already contributed....)
I don't know to what extent the GUA guides owe a debt to the Mac human interface guidelines. Then again, I just threw that last sentence in to provide an excuse for a link to another on-line style guide....
What about using OS/2 as a "security through obscurity" measure, like the Army did by changing their web server to Macintosh?
The "icewm" window manager (configured with a "warp" theme) combined with the "dfm" file manager provide a reasonable look-a-like and a crude work-a-like to WPS. They were both written by people who liked OS/2 as well as *nix.
;-)
But my recommendation is that KDE will rule (GNOME is pale imitation), so we need to make sure every good idea in WPS gets implemented in KDE too. Then all we need is a "warp" theme. GNOME can then ape KDE and do the same
-- Mike Greaves
SCO Unix beat it to that, as did Sequent and Burroughs (Unisys). :)
I'm sure Intel had a variant of one of their RT OS's up first though
I'm afraid I'm ready for the end of OS/2. I don't have anything bad against it, per se. But take the client for instance. I'm tired of running 16 bit drivers, such as those used for some sound cards and the ZIP drive.
I wanna know who these people are and what the hell they run as they keep claiming that OS/2 is so crash proof. Let them run the Netscape 4.61 beta for OS/2 and see how long their system stays stable. I'm going through weekly reboots, if not more often. All of my Windows 9X machines are at least as stable if not more.
And then there's the server side of shitty software. Lexmark has their software for network printers so botched up, that server gets booted weekly now. That's with the latest software I've got. With the original software that these people were running before I took over the network, it was a daily thing.
I'm tired of shitty software, shitty support (IBM won't let Netscape do its port of Netscape to OS/2, IBM has to do it. They come out with a beta of 4.04 when 4.5 was gold on every other platform. They then come out with a beta of 4.61 before they even get 4.04 bug free. Hell, my Communicator 4.0X betas under Win 9X were more stable than the current 4.04 release on OS/2.
I'm tired of the ugly color scheme they've got. Their device support sucks. I can't get 1024x728x65K support, even though I've got enough memory to support it (BIOS, NOT the driver!). I have to have another meg of video memory for that! Grrrrr. Too fucking lazy??? Even their high falughting servers only come with 512K of video memory. Damn IBM, ever think that I might just want to be able to surf the net comfortably with one of those things???
It's been obvious for some years now that IBM is not going to commit to any kind of major upgrade for OS/2.
I never installed Lan Server 5.0 (Warp 4 Server), but from installing Warp 4, Warp Server for e-commerce doesn't seem to be a great wonderfull leap from that. The Journaled File System seems to be nice. But that has yet to seen real action yet.
Bryan
If your choice is Windows and OS/2, I disagree. Remember, it's only the last year when Linux "became" a market leader. Even still, in many places, the choice would not be Linux or OS/2, it'd be Windows or OS/2. OS/2 wins hand-down over Windows as a desktop platform.
Very soon Linux will be accepted as the defacto desktop OS. You are right. OS/2 will lose its attractiveness. Open Source OS's will provide a better "roadmap" for the future, lower TCO, more support, more applications.
All "who was first" semantics aside, it then appears that nostalgia is the overriding factor here. OS/2 does not seem to have any technical advantage or meaningful future.
OS/2 is in the position now of being more like a '66 Thunderbird. Certainly attractive to certain users, but not very practical.
That's not to say that OS/2 isn't technically superior, I believe it is. It has an object-oriented UI, shadows that work, a strong kernel. Others have listed features too.
Are the technically superior features enough to make OS/2 a better OS, in spite of the drawbacks that were mentioned? Closed-source, no POSIX.1 compatibility... Some people saw yes, some say no. It seems like IBM has decided that for all of us. The answer is no. It was an advanced OS at one point, but now there are others that are better.
-Brent--
>If the release of W2K is postponed any longer, will MS call W2K K-RAD?
Perhaps they will call it K-RAP.
OS/2 was the first 32bit, multi-tasking, OS out there. It was and could be still better then Windows. But times were different back then. People believed MS when they were told that Windows was going to be the dominate OS. Microsoft strong-armed IBM into not pre-loading OS/2 on their PC's. And IBM still wasn't used to the PC market and didn't leverage it as well as they should have.
Closed source OS's are not bad, per say. BeOS is closed source, but it has a future. OS/2 could have a future also, if it was sold to a company that would actively develop it. There is the drawback that OS/2 is fragmented on the source-code level, as well as the binary level, just like Windows (ie, no POSIX.1 compatibility), but that is not the worst thing in the world.
I think I understand why IBM wouldn't want to have anything to do with OS/2 anymore. First, hardware has gotten powerful enough to run "Workstation" type OS's on PC hardware. And Linux runs on the hardware quite well, and provides a platform for the desktop that is already supported and has many applications ported to it. Also, they have Monetery too.
I don't understand why IBM wouldn't be willing to license the OS to Stardock though. Unless it's because they either get enough profit from it supporting the remaining OS/2 user base, or don't want to have to keep the user base and license the code to a third party, or don't want to lose the user base in the licensing agreement.
-Brent--