“IBM’s first 32-bit version of its advanced PC operating system was released 10 years ago this month. It was better than anything around, yet it failed. Its hopes were pinned on many of the same things we hope today will bring Linux to the forefront. What lessons are to be learned? Will we learn them? A glimpse of a sorry chapter in computing history.” Read the editorial at LinuxAndMain.
The Sad Parable of OS/2
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
This is a bit of an aside, but since we are on the topic of old operating systems here, you should check out this neat article over at The Register which talks about Bill Gates’ interest in trying to standardize on Xenix before Windows was created (and before he sold Xenix to SCO)…
“…Gates himself, speaking at Unix Expo in 1996, was still being nice about Unix, boasting about Microsoft’s early Xenix work, and grousing about AT&T’s leadership vacuum:
“I have to admit, it was fairly difficult to work with AT&T back then. They simply didn’t understand what they had. They didn’t understand how to manage the asset, either in terms of promoting it properly or in terms of making sure that there wasn’t fragmentation in how different implementations were put together. And so that vacuum in leadership created a bit of a dilemma for everybody who was involved in Unix.””
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/24504.html
it’s sad that OSs we like are failing (BeOS, OS/2) and the ones that should fail, stay (UNIX, MacOS)
Could these two OS’s be combined at all. On the INCIS Project for the NZ Police Dept IBM got OS/2 to work with Microsoft in a limited way
do you think mac os X should stay or fail?
it’s nice but it’s so slow and resource intensive.
i wish it was faster and more response.
MacOS 9 is slowly outing….
MacOS X should die not only because of bad design and legacy of both UNIX and Mac OS but also because Apple is behind it. when you see or hear apple, you think about lack of choice. even ms doesn’t confine you as much as apple.
While you are using many different nicknames every time you are posting, I know you are the same person not just because of your IP (—.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com), but because you are not using a header/synopsis on your comments, but you are using “…” each time. Please use headers for your comments, it will make everyone’s reading easier, especially if you also use “Re:[header]” when you are replying. Thank you.
alrighty
… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …
… … … … … … … … … … … … … … …
… … … … … … … … … … … … … … …
🙂
yea I should use something…
i’ve read reviews of MacOS X, scot hackers and ars-technica pcmag, etc.
what makes macos x a bad design? it has all the buzz words, like preemptive multitasking multithreading, etc.
– but i run it and i prefer mac classic OS 8 (not 9) because it’s faster on my mac.
>what makes macos x a bad design?
really I can’t say that is has bad design because I never ran it, I was referring to the comment above on slowness
OT: why don’t I increase the amount of dots every time I reply?
i have played a bit with os X and without being able to get into the meaty fun underlying toys of the operating system, i can tell you that the gui just about won me over regaurdless of speed or usability, altho usability has gone way up with the new design and unix likeness, speed i didn’t notice much because it was a brief use and i didn’t have os9 to compare to. but i can say that from what i got out of it was that it was a solid system, one i would gladdly by an apple for just to use again.
I still use OS/2 and it *STILL* kicks M$ buut.
Actually I don’t think he uses different nicks(please correct me if I’m wrong) everytime he posts. There are just probably more than one Rogers customer viewing OSNews, like myself.
I show up under rogers.com and attcanada.com
In my country OS/2 is still common sight, notably as the desktop OS of choice in the Telecom agencies.
eComStation is doing a pretty good job. But it is too expensive.
I’m just lazy to type in a nick
Sheesh, it’s NOT too expensive. Windows XP + Office XP is WAY more expensive than eComStation + Lotus SmartSuite…
All you people who wanna see real multitasking and can’t get BeOS to run on your computer (like ME) go get buy a copy of eComStation. You deserve it. Truly you do
If you don’t want expensive then Linux is for you. If so then get ready to learn EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT COMPUTERS INSIDE AND OUT. Linux is yesterday’s o.s. Next!
Why does IMB does not release the source code for OS/2? That way they will open source the operating system and the possibilities of succeeding will be much greater. Just like Linux. If Linux was closed source it would have ended just like OS/2. I am almost certain about this. Perhaps, IBM has got some plans for OS/2 so they don’t want to give the source code away?
One reason is that alot of the code is from M$. Remember, OS/2 was originally a join project of IBM and M$.
Huh? Why didn’t Be Inc release the BONE and open gl sources BEFORE they sold themselves cheap to Palm? It would have helped the guys (and gals) currently working on OpenBeOS. Why do companies try to keep their hardware specs closed? Keeping specs closed keeps the other o.s. from gaining new users.
Anyway, I hate MiCROSSEsoft and they are the number 1 problem in this industry. Keep buying Microsoft products people, it’s gonna help us lose our jobs.
loose jobs how is that ?
This is so bad. If IBM really wants to release the source code, I am SURE they will find a way somehow. There is always a way out. May be not all of the code, since MS contributed in the development of OS/2, but at least they can release “some portions” of the code which is owned by IMB and then the open source community can take over.
BONE was uncomplete
i don’t know about opengl as i don’t have a card to test on, but BONE breaks various things which needed to be fixed. It was not release quality. One of the best things about Be was their release quality, very few problems with their final releases.
IBM has about 13 dozen OS’s it supports; most of which its created. Their current plan seems to DUMP damn near every OS they’ve ever made and slowly replace them with Linux.
That way they can support just one OS across all their systems. (Linux on an AS/400 HA!)
OS/2 wouldn’t be open sourced even if Microsoft didn’t own parts of it.
“Anyway, I hate MiCROSSEsoft and they are the number 1 problem in this industry. Keep buying Microsoft products people, it’s gonna help us lose our jobs.”
I hate Microsoft as much as anyone. I hate the way they gather data about their users, I hate how unstable their products are, I hate how they kill every good thing that has ever come along for PCs and try and replace it with retarded MS versions, etc.
However, this is not why jobs will be lost. It is the morons that know what they are doing going around helping those who don’t for free, or even teaching what they know for free.
Doctors don’t show their patients how to check for rectal palups because they want the money for donning the latex glove. People skilled with computers need to be the same way.
“However, this is not why jobs will be lost. It is the morons that know what they are doing going around helping those who don’t for free, or even teaching what they know for free.”
Yeah, God forbid that anybody should ever do anything for free, right? After all, it’s all about intellectual property’ and ‘protecting your ideas’, right? Hell, why don’t we shut down all of the libraries and make these greedy knowledge seekers pay for what they learn? Or better, just keep them away from books altogether and have them sit in front of a television for 5 hours a night, so they can slurp ads and consume, just like they have been trained to do. In this world, you get nothing for free. If somebody’s house burns down and they end up on the street, fuck ’em. Why should we help them? After all, we need to get paid don’t we? There’s only one thing that matters and that is our bottom line.
“Doctors don’t show their patients how to check for rectal palups because they want the money for donning the latex glove. People skilled with computers need to be the same way.”
Yeah, just go and tell that to the open source community. I’m sure they would love to hear this kind of drivel.
Huge difference between libraries and open source software. Libraries buy books, no one buys open source software. Besides at a library you can borrow a book, with open source you get the book and the tools that made the book, plus the right to make changes and charge for the new book (as long as you give credit to the original author for their work and include their source code). btw I think os2 worldwide had a larger market share at its peak then linux does now, or prolly will at anypoint. Unless distros really disigned to lure windows users come out, which won’t cause the hard core linux geeks just want to be different (well except the smart ones who use it just because they prefer it, and not because they hate ms for perceived orwellian debauchery). btw still waiting for someone to point out how ms “gather data about their users”, and not some lame ass folder thats been known about since it first appeared in windows 3.1.
Granted for the sake of the argument that OS/2 cannot be opensourced due to Microsoft cross licensing agreement, IBM can give away OS/2 warp for free.
Netscape did so before it opened its source code.
Realplayer and Opera are giving away their software products for free without revealing their underlying source code.
even be inc did so, called be os pe.
why doesn’t ibm offer os/2 warp 4.0 for free, to be freely copied and distributed, freely preloaded – and maybe include a free suite like os/2 lotus suite?
os/2 warp can be downloaded, or sold on cd.
also, ibm may want to allow entreprenurial companies bundle os/2 with up to date drivers and sell them at a profit, resulting in many os/2 distros.
all that has been said can apply to other oses, most importantly, Be OS.
“Realplayer and Opera are giving away their software products for free without revealing their underlying source code.”
Realplayer and Opera are both adware. When you use ad-supported software, you ‘pay’ for that software by agreeing to receive ads in exchange for using the software. That is not the same thing as freeware.
Just wanted to point that out
It pains me to say it now, but the fact was that OS/2 had some serious flaws. For example, there were two command prompts! One for DOS and one for OS/2. If you tried to run a DOS program from the OS/2 prompt, a whole new DOS command prompt would pop open. NT’s command prompt let you run both DOS and NT programs. You could see the output from both types of programs in the same window. Much better.
And Windows programs running on OS/2 looked different from OS/2 programs running on OS/2. They even had separate control panels, duplicating various settings. Again, NT did a better job in handling 16- and 32-bit programs side-by-side.
And that default color combination! What a disaster. It looked hideous. Though some of the 3-D widgets were slightly nicer than NT.
I, for one, was pulling for NT to win the competition with OS/2.
Little did I know that if MS won with NT, they would bring innovation to a complete halt. But you have to admit that IBM didn’t do any innovating either with OS/2. They kept it (and indeed still keep it) on life support, but don’t provide any real progress.
What we really need right now is competition. MS can do very good work, as they showed with NT and as they are showing now with .NET as a response to Java. Mac OS X should help on the desktop in a way that Linux hasn’t, by giving MS something to look up to. But until MS feels threatened, they won’t really bother.
“cough cough” bullshit “cough cough”
Somebody tell IBM to opensource OS/2.
🙂
anyone who thinks that “Pre-Emptive Multithreaded Multitasking” is a buzzword should be smacked. That now days, its almost a requirement for an OS to be any good. What it means is that it can ‘do more than one task at a time’ but…its not up to the task to decide when to let another task have the CPU. There is a timer which is set and when time runs out, the OS gets to decide which task gets the CPU for the next bit of time.
PTO, which versions of OS/2 and NT are you comparing?
OS/2 pretty much required a 486/66 with at least 16-32MB to run. Win-3.1 ran on a 386 with 4-8MB. Most users at the time were running DOS 3.x on XP or 286 clones, the idea at that time was to force users to upgrade to 386 boxes, kind of like Win-XP. After reading Womack and Jones book ‘Lean Thinking’, I could see that OS/2 wasn’t doing much to cut hardware costs or improve quality for the typical user of 10 years ago. I bought a used 486 box with OS/2 from an engineer in SoCal, I’m pretty happy with it. I use Win-Me for internet access and bought a box that was MS logo certified to run it.
Just to start, I want everyone to know I LOVE OS/2. But it is over on the desktop. I don’t want to hear the “open source OS/2” crap or how Microsoft screwed OS/2. The past is the past and it MUST be accepted. I run OS/2 on two of my servers and it is without question the most reliable and stable platform I can choose as a server on an x86. The desktop however is a different story. The old “OS/2 is better than NT” held true at a point, but NOT since Windows 2000. Again, I love OS/2, but reality is reality and we must learn to let go. If OS/2 is working for you on the desktop that is fantastic: keep using it as long as you can (I am envious). I miss it dearly for everyday work, BUT, in today’s world it is a true challenge to run OS/2 and have the tools available to do the job…period. Come on! everyone has left OS/2 behind! No one can argue this point! Don’t even start on Smartsuite either because if they make 1.8 it will be the last update then it is over forever. IBM screwed up, they didn’t market their product properly, they had the “come to IBM because we are the best” philosophy and they failed. This pisses me off to no end but I can’t change it. They also were not aggressive enough and didn’t have the balls to stand up to Microsoft. They paid the price and we as OS/2 users did as well: we have no ISV’s left. OS/2 will live on as a print, file, FTP, Web, and email server but my desktop runs Windows 2000 because I have to have it to be compatible with the rest of the world 🙁 Get over it people, times change and it is time to move on. Any hopes of OS/2 coming back to the mainstream is wasted effort. The only contender with a minute chance is Linux….and I won’t even begin to go there. The facts are the facts. I am in no way flaming, I wish it could be different, but it isn’t. I am just as pissed off as many people are, but it is time to let go…damn. 🙁
Huh? HELLO? Microsoft are a monopoly it’s simple has that. Monopoly = lesser jobs needed. Guess everyone should use Windows XP? Guess females employes should use the males bathroom because they’re less of them in this building right? We are being weeded out people just because we are in the minority. Our o.s. aren’t gonna evolve by themselves. Want to see your 3d video card (or any other peripheral) supported in YOUR o.s. (BeOS, OS/2) of your choice? Better pray to your favorite deity because it’s not going to happen.
I have three kinds of nic cards lying around that aren’t even supported in BeOS nor OS/2!!! My video card isn’t supported in BeOS. My USB TV Tuner isn’t supported in neither. And my sound blaster live supports only the basic functionality. Guess what happens if I’d call Creative Labs saying that I’m having trouble installing my sound card under [insert your fav. o.s. here]? Sir, we don’t support your o.s. blah blah blah oink oink oink.
I have a machine running OS/2 Warp 4. It has 32 mb of RAM, a plain vanilla 133 Pentium and a 2MB S2 VGA card. I run Netscape, SmartSuite and have Voice Control installed. I also run Photoshop 2.5. It runs faster with more stability than any version of Windows on the same hardware.
Replying to APS: I was comparing the original releases of NT and OS/2. I beta-tested both of them. I made my decision to go with NT once they both were released. Later, when Warp first came out, I went back and looked at OS/2 again, to see if it had improved. My recollection was that it still had the two different Command Entry windows. Did later versions of Warp correct that? Can Warp run Win32 applications? If so, do they look like native OS/2 applications?
But it’s beside the point now, since I don’t want to run Win32 applications anymore! I fell hard for BeOS. I think my lingering affection for that fine product is shared by others on OS News! But, also like others, I’ve moved on. When I have a choice, I prefer Mac OS X, but apart from a little investigation of Cocoa, I don’t intend to do much that is OS X-specific. I stick with open source development tools, so I can move, as I do, between Win2K, Linux, Solaris, and OS X.
page.widening.posts.are.great.Eugenia.is.a.total.hack.eugenia.is.still .a.hack.page.widening.posts.are.great.Eugenia.is.a.total.hack.eugenia. is.still.a.hack.page.widening.posts.are.great.Eugenia.is.a.total.hack. eugenia.is.still.a.hack.page.widening.posts.are.great.Eugenia.is.a.tot al.hack.eugenia.is.still.a.hack.page.widening.posts.are.great.Eugenia. is.a.total.hack.eugenia.is.still.a.hack.page.widening.posts.are.great. Eugenia.is.a.total.hack.eugenia.is.still.a.hack.page.widening.posts.ar e.great.Eugenia.is.a.total.hack.eugenia.is.still.a.hack.page.widening. posts.are.great.Eugenia.is.a.total.hack.eugenia.is.still.a.hack.page.w idening.posts.are.great.Eugenia.is.a.total.hack.eugenia.is.still.a.hac k.page.widening.posts.are.great.Eugenia.is.a.total.hack.eugenia.is.sti ll.a.hack.page.widening.posts.are.great.Eugenia.is.a.total.hack.eugeni a.is.still.a.hack.page.widening.posts.are.great.Eugenia.is.a.total.hac k.eugenia.is.still.a.hack.page.widening.posts.are.great.Eugenia.is.a.t otal.hack.eugenia.is.still.a.hack.page.widening.posts.are.great.Eugeni a.is.a.total.hack.eugenia.is.still.a.hack.page.widening.posts.are.grea t.Eugenia.is.a.total.hack.eugenia.is.still.a.hack.page.widening.posts. are.great.Eugenia.is.a.total.hack.eugenia.is.still.a.hack.page.widenin g.posts.are.great.Eugenia.is.a.total.hack.eugenia.is.still.a.hack.page .widening.posts.are.great.Eugenia.is.a.total.hack.eugenia.is.still.a.h ack.page.widening.posts.are.great.Eugenia.is.a.total.hack.eugenia.is.s till.a.hack.page.widening.posts.are.great.Eugenia.is.a.total.hack.euge nia.is.still.a.hack.page.widening.posts.are.great.Eugenia.is.a.total.h ack.eugenia.is.still.a.hack.page.widening.posts.are.great.Eugenia.is.a .total.hack.eugenia.is.still.a.hack.page.widening.posts.are.great.Euge nia.is.a.total.hack.eugenia.is.still.a.hack.page.widening.posts.are.gr eat.Eugenia.is.a.total.hack.eugenia.is.still.a.hack.page.widening.post s.are.great.Eugenia.is.a.total.hack.eugenia.is.still.a.hack.