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Os/2

OS/2 was pretty much dead after Warp 3 shipped, Win95 launch just finished it.

OS/2 2.x on an IBM PS/2 is kind of fun to run since everything is supported. Support for anything outside of Ethernet, SCSI and Tokenring on commodity hardware of the time is not that great. Also updates are a royal pain in the rear of floppy flipping.
 
Also OS/2 News still active.

I wouldn't venture that Win95 did OS/2 in--the latter was far more stable than any version of Win9x. On the other hand, things were pretty much over when NT 4.0 debuted. You could still find OS/2 embedded in various applications, such as ATM devices. And remember that NT could run OS/2 console applications.

There is information about setting up OS/2 Warp 4/eComstation on VirtualBox on OS2world (it's a great way to test out systems on modern hardware--VB abstracts the host hardware so that no matter what you're using as a host, the hardware interface is standard.) Very handy if you want to run, say, an early version of Xenix on your modern super-by-gosh-bleeding-edge system running heaven-knows-what.
 
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I had v4 running on MS Virtual PC 2004 on an XP P4 box with 512meg of ram running along side Red Hat 6.2 and Dos just for the hell of it.
 
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Lou Gerstner's announcement of the reduction of push behind OS/2 came slightly before Win95 got released. I think the real problem was the out of control spending on Workplace OS, OS/2 for PowerPC, and regular OS/2 with sales nowhere near the level needed to break even.
 
I think OS/2 had many problems. In many ways some are the same problems Linux has, one of which is it needed a techy to manage it. I think the biggest one was that IBM made the same assumption BT made about ISDN, that is:-

1. Folks had to have it.
2. You could charge a premium price for it.

If you don't think this is true for Linux look at the price for a RedHat support contract and then when you have an issue with UBUNTO try and explain to your risk manager you chose a release with no commercial support....

OS/2 wanted to be every ones answer to every ones prayer. I think IBM saw mainframes and AS/400 vanishing, which they almost have, and wanted to be first on the game with a new wonder machine. Just like the "Future Systems" project they tried to deliver too much software on hardware that wasn't yet up to the job.

When Windows/95 came out it ticked 90% of the boxes for 90% of the people, and as some one else said, that's just enough to get elected president. Windows/95 came with TCP/IP built in. For MOST WARP releases it cost more than the basic OS. Yes there was dial-up support, but in reality that meant IBM was charging more for the TCP/IP LAN interface than they were for the rest of the OS.

Then there is that old chestnut of reliability. In practice OS/2 was no more reliable than Win95. It has a major flaw in its input queue processing so if any app gets stuck and stops processing its input the whole OS locks up. I used it for a while as we tried to down port an application from SunOS to a commodity PC platform. It just didn't cut it.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/11/half-an-operating-system-the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-os2/5/

in practice, once you knew which apps caused problems in Win95 you went and found a different one that didn't cause problems, so it stayed up pretty much all of the time. Because its really a very sophisticated DOS extender its really very quick . On the other hand with with OS/2 you were lucky to find one native app, and it wasn't quick...
... and as for modern Windows, well I have been retired for 12 months but we used to run about 300 windows servers in my last job. We seldom had a windows crash. On the other hand the Linux appliances, well they were appliances...

We still see the same mentality today. No one buys a piece of software because it ticks fewer feature boxes on a comparison test, then they complain what they have bought is complex and hard to use, well of course...
 
Well, for perhaps 90% of the user community out there, writing documents, running spreadsheets, email and web browsing functions would probably be sufficient. What half the stuff is on a Windows computer is for baffles me utterly. At least in Linux, I can pick and choose what I want--anything from a simple CLI-only system to a full-blown GUI desktop with all the gewgaws. I don't believe that Linux is any more reliable than other OSes, but you can omit troublesome features. Neither Windows nor OS/2 nor OSX allows me that luxury.

Creeping featurism is a disease that mankind has yet to conquer. I don't imagine that systems 10 years from now will be much faster than today's or significantly expanded in functionality, but that the OS platforms will be proportionately much larger--and the minimum ante for a system will have gone up considerably.
 
Ah, this used to be one of my favorite topics, and for a reason. MS's attacks against it eventually got even worse (Microsoft Munchkins for example). And don't forget DR-DOS and AARD code etc too (OS/2 never depended on DOS)
 
Chuck(G) said:
Well, for perhaps 90% of the user community out there, writing documents, running spreadsheets, email and web browsing functions would probably be sufficient. What half the stuff is on a Windows computer is for baffles me utterly. At least in Linux, I can pick and choose what I want--anything from a simple CLI-only system to a full-blown GUI desktop with all the gewgaws. I don't believe that Linux is any more reliable than other OSes, but you can omit troublesome features. Neither Windows nor OS/2 nor OSX allows me that luxury.
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You can start OS/2 in cli only mode quite easily. http://www.edm2.com/index.php/Stupid_OS/2_Tricks/Command_Line_Tips

"6 Using OS/2 without the Workplace Shell:

To use OS/2 without loading the Workplace Shell, replace the following line in your CONFIG.SYS

SET RUNWORKPLACE=<drive>:\OS2\PMSHELL.EXE

with

SET RUNWORKPLACE=<drive>:\OS2\CMD.EXE

where <drive> is the letter of the drive on which OS/2 is located.

Note that you can always invoke the Workplace Shell by typing PMSHELL at an OS/2 command line. It can consequently be removed by closing it from the Window List."

You can use alternative shells as well.
 
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I sort of remember something like that--too bad that I don't run OS/2 anymore.

So how do you get Windows 10 started in cli mode, without the GUI? Some sort of recovery mode?
 
Charissa: the updated install disk creation files for Warp v4 are IBM created for thinkpads systems with hdds greater than 8gigs are called warp4iu1.exe and warp4iu2.exe. You can get them at this page http://greyghost.mooo.com/pccbbs/mobiles/ along withe the readme file warp4iu.txt

They'll work on a generic system in conjuction with the original installation boot disk.

g4ugm mention of SIQ is quite valid and it was never really resolved but later OS/2 variants were better behaved. I think I used a program called Buster to keep an eye on processes.

Couple of screenshots of my old setups. The first was on v4 on a Celeron 400 based machine running XWorkplace shell, FP14 and a couple of other enhancements. I was still dialup at time but it was networked to a Linux and Windows 98 box. The second and third on my DecPc with 486DX2/66 mentioned earlier with the Warp v4 Server network client installed on the second pic and the Connect package on the previous. The servers client package far better than the "Connect" network package and works with a plain vanilla v3 installation with no problems at all and gives you DHCP support.
 

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Chuck(G) said:
I sort of remember something like that--too bad that I don't run OS/2 anymore.

So how do you get Windows 10 started in cli mode, without the GUI? Some sort of recovery mode?
Click to expand...

I don't think Windows/10 will start in console mode, but most of the Server Editions feature "Server Core Mode" in which only the basics are installed:-

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Hh846323(v=VS.85).aspx

but it really removes lots of other features. With Server 2012 and 2012R2 things are much improved as you can do remote installs from server manager console.
 
Chuck(G) said:
What half the stuff is on a Windows computer is for baffles me utterly.
Click to expand...

So that's 50% you do understand? Actually I really like Windows/7, it was nicely cut down, very little on there that you didn't need. The trouble is I ended up adding things to play with and now my W/7 box is as bloated as my XP machine. Windows/10 seems to have less clutter.

Windows/10 has a couple of nice features, if you don't like something in the start menu you can right-click on its icon and if it knows how to un-install it, it gives you an "un-install" option in the drop down list. In addition there are powershell commands to turn optional windows features on and off, so you can do a lot of things from the command line....
 
g4ugm said:
Actually I really like Windows/7, it was nicely cut down, very little on there that you didn't need. The trouble is I ended up adding things to play with and now my W/7 box is as bloated as my XP machine. Windows/10 seems to have less clutter.
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I would agree with Dave. Win7 was very much a throwback to a leaner Windows, and it is very stable. If you don't add all the "gadgets" and such. it's very lean for Windows, and very usable.

For me, the jury is still out on Win10 - I have Pro running under VMWare 11, and it's exhibiting strangeness at almost every turn, so I'd say it needs an SP or 2 before it starts to shine. Maybe it's just my installation, but time will tell...

WAY better than 8/8.1 though!

gwk
 
griffk said:
I would agree with Dave. Win7 was very much a throwback to a leaner Windows, and it is very stable. If you don't add all the "gadgets" and such. it's very lean for Windows, and very usable.
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So Win7 will run on less memory and disk storage than, say, Windows XP? Say, the same amount as Win2K--it being a "throwback" to earlier Windows systems and all?

Wow, that wasn't my impression. My impression was that it was an improvement over Vista, but that's not saying much, is it?
 
In my limited experience Windows/7 32-bit runs faster than XP on the same hardware. I haven't compared it with 2K, but I don't think its much different. However as always all performance is relative. It does need more disk space, because it copies the DVD image to disk so you should be able to add features without needing the disk.

Its really difficult to compare though. Memory plays funny tricks, I recently I booted up a Windows/95 P166MMX machine and was surprised how responsive it was...
 
Chuck(G) said:
So Win7 will run on less memory and disk storage than, say, Windows XP? Say, the same amount as Win2K--it being a "throwback" to earlier Windows systems and all?

Wow, that wasn't my impression. My impression was that it was an improvement over Vista, but that's not saying much, is it?
Click to expand...

Yea, Win8 tried to improve memory usage further, but it requires NX which is useless for older hardware like the i815 chipset capped to 512MB of RAM.
 
Thanks for the tip--maybe I'll give it a try--I'm always curious about how well software performs on limited resources. But obviously, unlike the article, this will be a 32-bit install.
 
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