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Old 29th March 2009
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phoenix phoenix is offline
Risen from the ashes
 
Join Date: May 2008
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I used OS/2 Warp 3 for two years back in university on the first computer I ever purchased (IBM 486/dx4 133 MHz, with 32 MB RAM). It came with Windows 95, but I was a heavy Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (WfW) user with the Xerox TabWorks shell, and couldn't get used to Windows 95. Found Warp for sale at a used book store, and decided to give that a try.

Took a long time to install off floppies, but was it ever worth it. I was able to install WfW, install all my old/trustworthy WfW apps, and get network/Internet access via OS/2. Never really used any OS/2 apps, but really like the Workplace Shell. Especially the way they implemented Shadow Files (shortcuts). You could create a Shadow of an exe, then move the exe around, and the shadow would still work, as the WPS updated the shadow anytime the underlying object meta-data was changed. This is something no other OS has been able to do (to my knowledge).

As a launcher for Windows apps, OS/2 was great. As the old advertising slogan went, OS/2 was a better Windows than Windows, and a better DOS than DOS. Too bad there weren't that many native apps.

Would've liked to try OS/2 Warp 4, as that had a much nicer theme/interface than Warp 3. Warp 3's GUI was quite primitive and unfinished looking, kinda like how GTK apps look nowadays when compared to OS X or KDE 4.

This is one OS that could've been very big, as it did things back in the 90s that Windows still doesn't do ... but IBM never marketed it right, and never catered to or sought out developers for it.
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