OS/2 turns 20
Alive..barely
Monday, April 2, 2007 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News
OS/2, the operating system that did battle with Windows for desktop supremacy turns 20 years old this week.
OS/2 was a land of many innovations. It is also the environment in which Stardock was born into. It is where Object Desktop came from originally with features such as the ability to change all the icons by applying a "package" of icons. It included the ability to change the look and feel of the OS/2 GUI (title bars, buttons, scrollbars, etc. sound familiar?).
OS/2 was incredibly advanced in its day. In 1992, when I started to really get into OS/2, it was a 32-bit, multitasking, multi-threaded operating system with an object oriented environment. By contrast, Windows 3.0 barely could run, was ugly, had a terrible shell (Program Manager), didn't really multitask.
Only through IBM's incredible incompotence and Microsoft's hardball marketing strategy did OS/2 end up blowing its incredible lead.
For those of you who were OS/2 users who are reading this, I toast you as fellow OS warriors in the right. We may have lost, but the battle goes on. 
Reply #2 Tuesday, April 3, 2007 12:49 AM
Zubaz raises a glass and wonders where the twenty years went
Reply #3 Tuesday, April 3, 2007 4:34 AM
All of us eventually left OS/2 for various reasons. It took many years for the Windows world to even approach the quality of multitasking that OS/2 offered. Those who didn't use OS/2 "back in the day" had no clue what they were missing. That, ultimately, is why OS/2 failed. IBM could not communicate OS/2's advantages to the average user. If they had been able to, OS/2 would have easily dominated. Unfortunately, "IBM's incredible incompetence" is an understatement. IBM's marketing department seemed to WANT OS/2 to fail.
Reply #4 Tuesday, April 3, 2007 6:10 AM
A Classic OS/2 and a New OS/2 look to compete with Vista.
Maybe a few of those first skins when Windowblinds was back on OS/2.
I am a big fan of the classic OS skins like OS/2, NextStep, Win32, BeOS (My Favorite).
Reply #5 Tuesday, April 3, 2007 11:21 AM
Reply #6 Tuesday, April 3, 2007 1:36 PM
The OS was vastly superior to anything Microsoft produced until windows XP.
It took them 15 years to catch up, and a lot of cash !
Only to say how important marketing is in our modern world.
Microsoft cheated by adapting the win32 API regularly, so IBM was always playing catch up on the compatibility side.
And apparently they blackmailed PC manufacturers to install windows : if they dared to pre install OS/2, the OEM license prices multiplied. I guess this is the same reason we don't see so many Linux boxes out there.
I remember doing real multitasking on my 386 pc :
- formatting a floppy drive
- run some movie in the background
- running X Wing (best space sim ever).
And all that in 8 meg ! Those were the days ...
Reply #7 Tuesday, April 3, 2007 2:42 PM
I have the whole series on a shelf. I keep meaning to build a Win95 box to run them all but never do.
(also ran on OS/2)
Reply #8 Tuesday, April 3, 2007 3:03 PM
Oh please. As someone who had an Amiga (before it was even called the Amiga 1000) you can't possibly say that the Amiga was better than OS/2 so adamently. It had some great features and great multitasking and could do it on 512k of memory but it wasn't memory protected, a single app could take over, and its windowing system was primitive and its drives were incredibly slow. It had its pros and cons but by 1992, I'd use OS/2 over the Amiga 2500 or whatever it was by that point.
Reply #9 Tuesday, April 3, 2007 3:09 PM
Cheers!!
Reply #10 Tuesday, April 3, 2007 5:45 PM
"I've got this pointing device thingy.. sort of looks like a mouse" (unamned source Xerox)
Reply #11 Tuesday, April 3, 2007 7:08 PM
Anyone know if OS/2 is available for download & use still? What was it's latest version until it was discontinued by IBM? What kind of hardware did it require to run? Did it support ethernet & token ring - it sounds very interesting! Also does anyone know if there are any decent full size screenshots of this os in action?
Reply #12 Tuesday, April 3, 2007 11:52 PM
Cheers!
Kris
(lotta past history there - I have a Warp Connect VPC VM around if you want to hear the startup sounds, Brad 
)
Reply #13 Thursday, April 5, 2007 1:56 PM
I must admit, I had my first experiences with OS/2 a little late, short time before Windows 95. But I loved it.Please login to comment and/or vote for this skin.
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Reply #1 Tuesday, April 3, 2007 12:22 AM