Since I'm writing this using an OS/2 Warp machine, Warp cannot be as dead as the majority expects it to be. So much for that. I must agree that rather sad things happen at IBM's. But in spite of their favour for Linux in all flavours I have to remind the kind reader that OS/2 resembles that good old Phoenix lately by being burned (by it's inventors) and rising up again with some new feathers and appearance. Since IBM doesn't want this bird to be recognized they chose to let someone else sell it as eComStation (eCS). This thing looks much more like a consumer OS (but still not like something Xtremely Problematic my kids smuggled into the trolley at toys'r'us) while featuring a journalling filesystem (when MS kept brushing up their 'good' old FAT filesystem to something with 32 in it) and much more. We indeed have our problem zones, but at the moment there's the situation that eCS can almost do anything Linux can concerning hardware and driver support. Well, eCS still is a single user OS and would never run on an IBM z/series machine, but for everyday work it does it's tricks (and you're always sure your data gets stored instead of going up in (blue) smoke.
MS had enough time to work on their mediocre stuff, so we finally have XP. If somebody had invested the same sums into OS/2 (plus the advantage that it surely wouldn't have been MS), who knows what we (or better, they) would be able to do with their PCs today...
I'd say, let OS/2 live, let Linux live, and don't let them put gates all around us. Maybe we should join forces and kick them out! Linux and OS/2 make a much better combination than Windows and... well, Windows.
Without proper support from IBM we have organized in user groups, participating in OS/2 oriented projects and sites like os2.org, voice and others. They aren't hard to find, they're not hiding!
Today we can still run OS/2 on our desktop machines, even though the newer stuff usually lacks OS/2-drivers (sometimes I have to use my Wintendo partition for certain tasks because of that, sad but true), but many things have changed to the better in the last few years. Some examples:
We have graphic drivers that adapt themselves dynamically to almost any available hardware (Scitech Display Doctor). We are able to clone one machine to another (using freeware utilities), even when their hardware (mainboard, hdd-controllers, graphics adaptors) are different. We can choose from a large variety of applications including native OS/2, 16-bit Windows, ported from Linux (almost everything from Linux is available for OS/2), 32-bit Windows with Odin, Java (of course;-) and so on.
A typical OS/2 installation doesn't start with 3 diskettes and end with numerous fixpacs any more - thanks to IBM's convenience pacs featuring a bootable cd and all fixpacs included.
The next 'consumer' version of OS/2 (called eComStation or eCS) has been distributed to the buyers. It features (among other things) an installation routine that takes only some 10 minutes (!) to set up the whole system, a journalling filesystem (bye bye lost clusters), RSJ (cd-writer) and much more.
And, of course, it has that bootable cd and all those fixpacs on board.
No need to install some special mainboard drivers (AMD users running Wintendo know what I mean, don't they?) Just install and get going.
I'm running OS/2 on two of my machines at home. One is an elderly IBM-Machine with a Pentium II 266 and some 96MB ram. Performs great. The other one is a homebrew Athlon 1200 (previously was a Duron 800, but for game's sake I had to upgrade that one), which runs like hell (well, at least with OS/2, Wintendo 98 only got a little bit faster). Its voodoo 5500 (OK, I know I'm a hardware dinosaur) is fully supported (thx to sdd).
They are connected to a home lan containing some more machines running Wintendo and/or Linux, and the IBM plays the role of an internet proxy gateway with squid (remember that one) and apache (...).
If you should have gotten the expression by now that I'm quite happy with my OS/2, you're perfectly right.
Well, I must admit I'm an OS/2 user. I have been since around 1990; at that time, an installation meant to deal with 21 diskettes (the first version I installed myself was OS/2 2.0).
I've always had some other OS on my machine, because most of my favorite games needed direct hardware access to perform smoothly, so I chose OS/2 for the important stuff and MS-DOS (back then) for play.
Today the situation hasn't changed much, only MS-DOS has been substituted by Windows 98.
I can afford it to crash almost regularly, because it isn't important for me; it's like resetting a Playstation, it doesn't matter.
Besides that, there is nothing I need. I've had my Linux experiences, and I still use it for educational purposes (to get used to the ***ix way of computing), because I need that knowledge, but if I had to rely on Linux the same way I rely on OS/2, I certainly would have returned to pencil and paper already.
I dont blame people for not using OS/2; as long as their need are met, that's fine. But if someone tries to convince me, that Linux or even Windows are so much better than OS/2, I tend to get angry because most of the arguments are simply drawn out of some marketing statements from Redmont or based on mere disinformation.
We've had stuff like that posted here, too, and replies that corrected some false assumptions.
If you don't LIKE OS/2, that's your personal opinion, but it surely isn't a good base for OS choice.
Neither is the fact, that (almost) everyone uses Windows. While a large user base certainly has its advantages, it doesn't impose some vital facts about the OS used (like being stable, scalable, or even reliable).
Many of those that posted things like 'OS with no apps' or 'lack of drivers' referred to OS/2 Warp 3.
But things have changed since then! When you compare OS/2 with other OSes, keep in mind that the version we are dealing with right know originated in 1996! Windows 2000 achieved some stability only recently, but it still needs much more ressources to run - exactly like in the first days of Windows NT. Of course the variety of Windows apps is overwhelming, but there also is some OS/2 application for (well, I must admit ALMOST) any given need. Well, no single OS can serve every purpose, right? The OS/2 driver scene has evolved rapidly since warp 3; today I can even pull the harddisk I boot from, put it into another pc and boot OS/2 there! No 1001 newly detected hardware features I need to reboot and/or insert my 'Original Windows CD' for! What a great option for constant availability!
Linux, on the other hand, also has its stability issues. As long as you install it as a server machine (just the necessary daemons, no gui), everything is fine.
But try to use it as a workstation in a networked environment consisting of OS/2- and Windows 95-clients and NT servers... it can be hard to even set up a network connection to another machine. We've had uncounted crashes(!) with our Linux box caused by buggy x-servers...
My suggestion: Just compare eComStation, the OS/2 of today, to Windows or Linux - they'll be shipping eCs demos soon. Give it a try! What do you have to loose? You might even like it!
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Since I'm writing this using an OS/2 Warp machine, Warp cannot be as dead as the majority expects it to be.
So much for that.
I must agree that rather sad things happen at IBM's. But in spite of their favour for Linux in all flavours I have to remind the kind reader that OS/2 resembles that good old Phoenix lately by being burned (by it's inventors) and rising up again with some new feathers and appearance. Since IBM doesn't want this bird to be recognized they chose to let someone else sell it as eComStation (eCS). This thing looks much more like a consumer OS (but still not like something Xtremely Problematic my kids smuggled into the trolley at toys'r'us) while featuring a journalling filesystem (when MS kept brushing up their 'good' old FAT filesystem to something with 32 in it) and much more.
We indeed have our problem zones, but at the moment there's the situation that eCS can almost do anything Linux can concerning hardware and driver support. Well, eCS still is a single user OS and would never run on an IBM z/series machine, but for everyday work it does it's tricks (and you're always sure your data gets stored instead of going up in (blue) smoke.
MS had enough time to work on their mediocre stuff, so we finally have XP. If somebody had invested the same sums into OS/2 (plus the advantage that it surely wouldn't have been MS), who knows what we (or better, they) would be able to do with their PCs today...
I'd say, let OS/2 live, let Linux live, and don't let them put gates all around us. Maybe we should join forces and kick them out! Linux and OS/2 make a much better combination than Windows and... well, Windows.
Without proper support from IBM we have organized in user groups, participating in OS/2 oriented projects and sites like os2.org, voice and others. They aren't hard to find, they're not hiding!
Today we can still run OS/2 on our desktop machines, even though the newer stuff usually lacks OS/2-drivers (sometimes I have to use my Wintendo partition for certain tasks because of that, sad but true), but many things have changed to the better in the last few years. Some examples:
We have graphic drivers that adapt themselves dynamically to almost any available hardware (Scitech Display Doctor). We are able to clone one machine to another (using freeware utilities), even when their hardware (mainboard, hdd-controllers, graphics adaptors) are different. We can choose from a large variety of applications including native OS/2, 16-bit Windows, ported from Linux (almost everything from Linux is available for OS/2), 32-bit Windows with Odin, Java (of course;-) and so on.
A typical OS/2 installation doesn't start with 3 diskettes and end with numerous fixpacs any more - thanks to IBM's convenience pacs featuring a bootable cd and all fixpacs included.
The next 'consumer' version of OS/2 (called eComStation or eCS) has been distributed to the buyers. It features (among other things) an installation routine that takes only some 10 minutes (!) to set up the whole system, a journalling filesystem (bye bye lost clusters), RSJ (cd-writer) and much more.
And, of course, it has that bootable cd and all those fixpacs on board.
No need to install some special mainboard drivers (AMD users running Wintendo know what I mean, don't they?) Just install and get going.
I'm running OS/2 on two of my machines at home. One is an elderly IBM-Machine with a Pentium II 266 and some 96MB ram. Performs great. The other one is a homebrew Athlon 1200 (previously was a Duron 800, but for game's sake I had to upgrade that one), which runs like hell (well, at least with OS/2, Wintendo 98 only got a little bit faster). Its voodoo 5500 (OK, I know I'm a hardware dinosaur) is fully supported (thx to sdd).
They are connected to a home lan containing some more machines running Wintendo and/or Linux, and the IBM plays the role of an internet proxy gateway with squid (remember that one) and apache (...).
If you should have gotten the expression by now that I'm quite happy with my OS/2, you're perfectly right.
And I intend to keep it that way...
I've always had some other OS on my machine, because most of my favorite games needed direct hardware access to perform smoothly, so I chose OS/2 for the important stuff and MS-DOS (back then) for play.
Today the situation hasn't changed much, only MS-DOS has been substituted by Windows 98. I can afford it to crash almost regularly, because it isn't important for me; it's like resetting a Playstation, it doesn't matter.
Besides that, there is nothing I need. I've had my Linux experiences, and I still use it for educational purposes (to get used to the ***ix way of computing), because I need that knowledge, but if I had to rely on Linux the same way I rely on OS/2, I certainly would have returned to pencil and paper already.
I dont blame people for not using OS/2; as long as their need are met, that's fine. But if someone tries to convince me, that Linux or even Windows are so much better than OS/2, I tend to get angry because most of the arguments are simply drawn out of some marketing statements from Redmont or based on mere disinformation.
We've had stuff like that posted here, too, and replies that corrected some false assumptions.
If you don't LIKE OS/2, that's your personal opinion, but it surely isn't a good base for OS choice.
Neither is the fact, that (almost) everyone uses Windows. While a large user base certainly has its advantages, it doesn't impose some vital facts about the OS used (like being stable, scalable, or even reliable).
Many of those that posted things like 'OS with no apps' or 'lack of drivers' referred to OS/2 Warp 3.
But things have changed since then! When you compare OS/2 with other OSes, keep in mind that the version we are dealing with right know originated in 1996! Windows 2000 achieved some stability only recently, but it still needs much more ressources to run - exactly like in the first days of Windows NT.
Of course the variety of Windows apps is overwhelming, but there also is some OS/2 application for (well, I must admit ALMOST) any given need. Well, no single OS can serve every purpose, right?
The OS/2 driver scene has evolved rapidly since warp 3; today I can even pull the harddisk I boot from, put it into another pc and boot OS/2 there! No 1001 newly detected hardware features I need to reboot and/or insert my 'Original Windows CD' for! What a great option for constant availability!
Linux, on the other hand, also has its stability issues. As long as you install it as a server machine (just the necessary daemons, no gui), everything is fine. But try to use it as a workstation in a networked environment consisting of OS/2- and Windows 95-clients and NT servers... it can be hard to even set up a network connection to another machine. We've had uncounted crashes(!) with our Linux box caused by buggy x-servers...
My suggestion: Just compare eComStation, the OS/2 of today, to Windows or Linux - they'll be shipping eCs demos soon. Give it a try! What do you have to loose? You might even like it!