Is OS/2 Coming Back? 432
mstansberry writes "Is IBM considering relaunching OS/2? One source close to IBM says Big Blue plans to repurpose OS/2 services atop a Linux core. IT managers ask, why now?" Hey, back in simpler times OS/2 was super badass. Both of the guys who ran it were hard core.
WPS (Score:5, Interesting)
I would be delighted to switch my window manager back to the Workplace Shell (well, provided that there were keyboard shortcuts). I would not be so delighted to again deal with the SIQ lockups (but I imagine a port of WPS to X11 wouldn't have that problem, except to the extent that its own components might themselves use their own queue). I also would worry about EA corruption, which was always a concern with OS/2 as the collection of cruft in EAs kept growing and often a little mistake led one to need to repair them (or reinstall the system).
Anyhow, point is if I could just have the interface back, with some light Unix sensibilities injected, I'd be happy to switch from WindowMaker back to WPS. (Actually, having Stardock's Object Desktop as part of that would be a huge plus).
Great, another deskop environment (Score:4, Interesting)
People moan and whine because there's Gnome and KDE (although there's increasingly a bit of a norm unifying the whole thing thanks to opendesktop) and now they pull, out of all things, OS/2 services ?
Granted, why not ? But the few who actually worked on OS/2 programming let it go a long time ago. And why OS/2 and not [insert whatever other dead system here] ?
Everybody nowadays either uses Unix or Windows. Come up with something new or work with the crowd. Out with the IT necromancy I say. Bring out the torches and pitchforks !
An updated Workplace Shell would be great (Score:5, Interesting)
Gnome and KDE are fine, but if IBM really wanted to, they could make them both obsolete pretty quickly with an update WPS interface. Plus, let's face it, at this stage in the "Linux on the desktop" battle, Linux *needs* an official, fully-funded commercial desktop environment. The Gnome vs. KDE battle is retarded, and both DEs are starting to get kind of nutty. IBM could restore sanity.
I'm all for it, personally. But I also think it's obvious that this is just a rumor.
They could port (Score:4, Interesting)
They could port the OS/2 userspace APIs to linux. It would probably work pretty well. They could probably make it load and run OS/2 EXEs and DLLs unchanged. That would be cool.
(Spent some years of my life working on IBMs C++ compiler for OS/2.)
Re:OS/2 never went away (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually I have to wonder if OS/2 might not make a great embedded OS these days. It is super reliable and by today's standards petty light weight.
OS/2 Mobile on your next phone?
It would be a very intresting move (Score:4, Interesting)
Since MS has won the desktop OS battle, IBM has been behaving as a small company, but they are not. Sure the company that IS big IT must have more aspirations then just being a service provider?
And of course they are a lot more, but once they were the face of IT to ordinary people. You bought an IBM or at least an IBM compatible.
And now?
So if this story has some truth in it, it could mark an attempt by IBM to get back out there and fight in a crowded market place and not just charge 1000 dollars per hour for its personnel.
Doubt this is the case but I have always had the thought that if anyone can break the current stalemates it is IBM. It could force both hardware and software makers to worry about competition again.
Not that I think it is likely, IBM does quite well as it is. But it would be more intresting if it is true.
Re:What's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)
How about because the X Window System actually sucks?
How about because there is a better way of doing things?
How about because a standardized UI is better than the crap out there now?
Is that reason enough for you?
Re:Not everyone likes POSIX (Score:3, Interesting)
No way (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Those two guys (Score:3, Interesting)
That was a move I just couldn't understand - IBM dropping OS/2 just as Windows 95 came out.
Here's the situation - Microsoft is forcing it's user base to migrate off of DOS and Windows 3.x. Both Windows 95 and OS/2 are backward compatible with DOS/Windows 3.x, and at the time, there were more native applications available for OS/2 than applications that used Windows 95's exclusive features, and OS/2 was far and away acknowledged to be the technically superior OS. Since Microsoft was forcing a migration to an unfamiliar environment in any event, you'd have thought it would have been the perfect opportunity for IBM to swoop in and grab some of Microsoft's user base.
So, given a golden opportunity to capitalize on a disruption in the OS market, what did IBM do? Dropped OS/2 like a hot potato and walked away without looking back. I just couldn't understand their reasoning.
A resurgence of OS/2 at this point might be a cute trick, but I doubt it's going to happen. Given that IBM is currently doing everything it can to cut costs and is laying off people left and right, I can't really see them investing resources into a product that has limited interest in it. It's not even clear that they still have the expertise on the payroll to pull it off. It's a great rumor, but sorry, in the current environment, I'm just not seeing this as happening.
Re:An updated Workplace Shell would be great (Score:1, Interesting)
I disagree. Linux has been around for well over a decade and there is still no standard decent desktop. All the options tend to suck in one way or another. I would love for HP, Sun, IBM, Redhat, SUSE, etc to get together and create one standardized desktop.
Doesn't mean that KDE, Fluxbox and the like would go away, you could still develop them and use them, but it would be a boon to Linux to have some kind of standardized DE.
Wasn't *that* uncommon in its heydey (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Those two guys (Score:3, Interesting)
When a computer cost $1500-$2000 for just the low-end, a $250 OS price difference on top of that was a non-starter. If Windows95 has to stand on it's own on the shelf at Computer City or CompUSA like OS/2 did, it might, *MIGHT*, be a different world now.
Not many OS/2 Apps that people are wanting (Score:1, Interesting)
I am not aware of any apps that are in demand, that only ran on OS/2.
It is my opinion that Linux has captured the users that would have stayed with OS/2, had OS/2 become more widely used.
I even ran OS/2 Warp back in the day, trying to run M$ applications (Wordperfect, for example) in it. Eventually then went to M$ NT, then Linux, back in the 90s.
Ahhh OS2. (Score:3, Interesting)
OS2 is what pushed me unto the unix for good. My bad ass 486-25 sx (with math coprocessor), 16 meg of ram and WHOPPING 1.2gig full height scsi drive was hungering for some more fun. I had been running a hodge podge of operating systems and had settled on DESQView/X. I had it all, running windows 3.0 apps, command shells, x applications, even X apps from remote! But then a new version of OS2 came out (2.0? 2.1?) that promised me everything DESQView/X was giving me, but running with out DOS! THE FUTURE HAD ARRIVED!
OS/2 promptly ate my partition table and destroyed all my DVX, windows and dos partitions.
I was so effing pissed that it did this without really asking me anything that I swore it off. Fortunately something sorta BIG had just happened there on them ol' USENETs: The new 11 Floppy version of Slackware dropped. I installed it... and never looked back.
Re:WPS (Score:5, Interesting)
I spent years working as a test technician and test engineer installing operating systems and testing hardware. I have experience with AIX, SunOS, Solaris, Novell NetWare 2.1, 2.2, 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 4.0, 5.0, etc., IBM OS/2 1.31, 2.0, Microsoft OS/2 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.31, MS DOS 2.0, 2.1...6.1.?, Microsoft Windows NT 3.51, 4.0,..., HP-UX 9.?, 10.*, 11.*, SCO Unix, Linux Slackware, SCO Unix and others. I also have exposure to MS Xenix, HP 3000, HP 1000, and others.
Of the lot, I liked IBM OS/2 2.0 the best. Most stable, easiest to use, powerful. You would have had to be there at the time to understand why IBM OS/2 2.0 didn't do better; Microsoft waged a marketing war to prevent OS/2 2.0's success. The irony is that Microsoft had rights to the IBM source code and used much of the OS/2 2.0 source code to improve its products. You could find copyright and version strings with IBM's copyright in areas such as file system code.
Microsoft isn't the biggest because it writes the best code. Only a Microsoft bigot would believe that.
And people who believe that Microsoft will continue to dominate clearly don't remember how it used to be that IBM dominated the market. IBM is still important, but it's turn as being number one is over. Microsoft, too, will fade. Its importance as a operating system is waning as the use of computers becomes network focused. Even with all its experience with writing operating systems, and its dominance of the operating system market, Microsoft couldn't make inroads into new markets such as cell phones and mobile devices.
Microsoft is a one-trick pony and that trick is being upstaged by actors who are far better.
Re:WPS (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at the government. They dont have a stable OS to use for any military operations.
Yeah: vessels going to sea today that were designed 10+ years ago are all running Windows NT (if they went with an MS OS). There's a scary thought: the most advanced weapons every devised run on Windows NT.
OS/2 was as popular as the Mac once... (Score:3, Interesting)
According to IDC, IBM shipped a total of 4.5 million units of desktop OS/2 (with another 275,000 as servers) in 1995.
To put that in perspective, note that Apple shipped 4.8 million Macintoshes in 1995, all running System 7.5, plus another 800,000-900,000 System 7.5 upgrades.
It was almost as popular as the Mac in 1995, and the Mac was #2 to Windows at that time.
Re:Why not bring back Amiga OS? (Score:3, Interesting)
OS/2 well ahead of its time in 1995, not now. (Score:2, Interesting)
I used OS/2 1.3 - Warp between 1993 and 2000 both as a user and a developer with it as a target platform. Although at the top when I switched to Warp (1994), it was streets ahead of Windows (with the exception of NT 3.1/3.5 - but they had heavy resource consumption for the time!), there were still major problems:
1) The SIQ - Truly horrible - just as for Windows 3.0/3.1, it was just far too easy to get the whole system to lockup (basically all PM based apps used a single system input queue, thus if any blocked for long........)
2) Hardware support, though much improved with Warp was still very iffy, especially back in the days of OS/2 2.1, I remember setting up the netware drivers on my desktop - sheets of typed up A4, lots of config.sys hacking etc.
3) Even back then, the moment Windows 95 appeared (irrespective of it's technical merits), the GUI LOOKed ugly compared to Windows 95s.
It was fast and efficient though, I'll say that for it - a kernel written in assembler, rather than C, but that was probably the very same reason that it was inherently non portable apart from the briefly seen PowerPC version and the briefly living OS/2 2.1 SMP ("Special version"). I don't believe they even supported SMP on anything except that OS/2 2.1 build (i.e. they dropped it again for OS/2 Warp 3 and Warp 4 - maybe I'm wrong).