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Old 26th March 2009
indiocolifa indiocolifa is offline
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Default Opinions about OS/2

Being operating systems architecture a particular area of interest for me, I tried many many popular and not so popular OSes, but believe that I've never touched OS/2! I got the installation disks back in 1995 for my 486 from a friend but missed the opportunity to install it.

Anyone from our users to tell experiences with OS/2 (or eComStation )?
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Old 26th March 2009
teig teig is offline
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I used it for more than 10 years at home and at work (software development).
Loved it! Great OS, but as with all other OSes, not without issues.

Eventually moved to Linux and then FreeBSD.
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Old 29th March 2009
unicyclist unicyclist is offline
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Still have Warp 4 (with updates) on 2 machines and love it. Still amazes me how much was packed into so little hd space. Runs great on my 200 mhz machine.
Buy hey, I still have my Commodore/Amiga machines up and running

Having said all of that, OpenBSD is my main/primary OS.

btw- if you go to the ecomstation site, you can download a demo to see what it is like now:
http://www.ecomstation.com/democd/

Last edited by unicyclist; 31st March 2009 at 12:43 AM.
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Old 29th March 2009
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phoenix phoenix is offline
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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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Old 14th December 2009
aleunix aleunix is offline
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I think the real problem with OS/2 was primary the more bigger amount of resources demanded compared to Windows and after that sure there was even the marketing from Ibm.
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Old 14th December 2009
Broodjegehaktmetmayo Broodjegehaktmetmayo is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by phoenix View Post
Took a long time to install off floppies


Those good ol' days
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Old 14th December 2009
Broodjegehaktmetmayo Broodjegehaktmetmayo is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by phoenix View Post
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.
I recall - if I recall correctly - that Big Blue at that time was that unorganized conglomerate of all kinds of services etcetera that didn't know on what to focus, and hence they sold (parts of?) OS/2 to MS which used it to build NT.

I may be mistaking here, but then again, they also went completely bananas by selling SAP, and they got lost in the wood with their famous 'the whole world won't ever need more than 5, perhaps 6, mainframes'
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Old 14th December 2009
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Having never tried it, my only opinions of OS/2 are what can be drawn from The Art of UNIX Programming.
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Old 14th December 2009
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phoenix phoenix is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Broodjegehaktmetmayo View Post
I recall - if I recall correctly - that Big Blue at that time was that unorganized conglomerate of all kinds of services etcetera that didn't know on what to focus, and hence they sold (parts of?) OS/2 to MS which used it to build NT.
OS/2 1.x and 2.x were jointly developed by IBM and Microsoft.

OS/2 3.x was initially developed jointly, but microsoft went off on their own tangent with Windows NT (NT shipped with an OS/2 compat layer, but it was removed in Win2K or WinXP). IBM released OS/2 3.x and 4.x on their own.
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