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I use to work at a call center that was all IBM token ring and OS/2. Though, in the time I was there we were already moving to MS Windows. (And Ethernet.)

It's a shame OS/2 didn't put up more of a fight. It was better than Windows in pretty much every way. It wasn't until Windows 2000 came out that Microsoft had an operating system that you could realistically compare with what OS/2 had had for more than a decade. (Edit: I suppose Windows NT could be considered as well. But Windows NT was never aimed at consumers where OS/2 Warp was.)

Great link here if you're interested in reading some OS/2 history:

http://pages.prodigy.net/michaln/history

Edited 2006-12-17 01:17

I had heard about OS/2's better multitasking and multithreading than Windows had pre-Win2k. Since I was new to the field at the time, I really had no concept of what that meant.

I'll check the link out. Thanks.

FYI, I used Windows NT 3.1, 3.5 and 3.51. I also used OS/2 2.11 and 3.0. Of all of them, OS/2 3.0 was the best OS. It had the best multitasking of any non-Unix OS I have ever used.

I also really regret that IBM didn't put up more of a fight. I despise Windows (sorry, my personal feelings), and would much rather use OS/2.

I keep saying I can't afford eComStation, but maybe I will free up the $$$ when 2.0 gets released, and give it another shot. It won't be OS/2 3.0, but it will still be a better OS than Windows! :-)

"I've only ever seen this in use at one place....my old college radio station. I think it was something having to do with running the spots at certain times of the day. "

I've seen OS/2 being used together with IBM mainframes (AS/400 eSeries) at our local financial authority (Oberfinanzdirection). Programmers used the OS/2 boxes for programming and performing the dialog with the AS/400 and, of course, to work with the results (doing statistics, diagrams, reports, bills etc.).

I had my own experience with OS/2 3.0 many years ago, I found it was quite cool. It was used as OEM operating system and came preinstalled on PCs for some time. My friends using it were happy with it - happier than with "Windows" 3.1 before and '95/'98 after. OS/2 was more stable, offered better multimedia support and could even run DOS applications in multitasking.

You might want to have a look at http://toastytech.com/guis/indexos2.html where you can see some impressive screenshots.

So it's nice to hear about eComStation. It even supports multiple virtual desktops. OS/2 and eComStation are still worth to be mentioned being present in the OS field.

Does IBM have anything to do with ecomstation?

As far I know they don't. They licensed it to Serenity Systems.

you forgot to add the irony tags. You cannot be serious about this ... "only $259 for a full copy of eComStation" - I have a full copy of a Linux operating system that supports more hardware, brings along tons of good software etc. And there is OpenOffice - why should I buy it???
You really must be living in a distant galaxy if you seriously believe that this eComStation price is a good offer ...

The only reason I continue to use OS/2 is the GUI. The WPS is a one-of-a-kind animal, unlike any other interface out there. You kind of have to experience it to understand why people would continue to use and develop for a "dead" OS.

Aside from that, all the advantages that OS/2 had over other systems in its day (rock solid stability, *real* pre-emptive multitasking, memory management, etc) are now present in Linux and other systems, but IMO no other system has an interface that can compete with the WPS.

Ask any current or former OS/2 user what they like/miss most about OS/2, and I'd bet at least 9/10 will say the GUI.

Not me. The GUI is nice, but for me the big drawing point for OS/2 is the CLI. I like having a sophisticated command line environment (in my case a mix of 4OS2+4DOS) where filenames retain case but are not case sensitive, and I think REXX is a nice scripting language (though I also use Perl under OS/2 on occasion as well as 4OS2 batch files).

Linux isn't bad, either, and DOSEMU is fairly seamless these days, but bash isn't 4OS2.

Edited 2006-12-18 19:19

Surely you don't believe that noone should develop for BeOS/Haiku, AmigaOS, FreeDOS, RISC OS, ReactOS, Menuet, Plan9, SkyOS, etc, etc? All of these, like eCS, have very small user-bases relative to the behemoths that are Win/Mac/Linux and BSD.

People use eCS because they enjoy the experience, are free from viruses and malware, have sufficient up-to-date software to perform most tasks, and principally because OS/2 was integral to so many business processes that it is simply not economic to remove an OS/2 element to replace it with WIndows/whatever.

Serenity Systems is a commercial vendor. It makes good money out of the eCS business. How is this a dead OS? eCS and OS/2 users get a desktop OS that is constantly evolving.

For the record, eCS is my third most used OS, after OSX and WinXP.

I would hate to see an OS landscape devoid of the variety of minority OS's.

OS/2 isn't that old. It's about the same age as Windows, if you count in the entire development history. The newest IBM release of OS/2 is from 2003, and is younger than Win2K3 Server

One could claim *BSD and GNU/Linux are older or the same age as OS/2.

I just wish IBM would release the source code for the Workplace Shell, so someone could finally fix the message queue once and for all, and maybe even port the WPS to Linux.

If they could make it work on top of X, that would be very cool. (It would be cool even if it was independent of X, but whoever ported it wouldn't even have the power of Apple to get people to write apps for it, and I doubt OS/2 apps would work on it straight out of the box.)

eCom does have Java and flash support

http://www.ecomstation.com/product_info.phtml?url=nls/en/content/to...

http://www.innotek.de

http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.org.netlabs.odin.user/day=20051019

I haven't used OS/2 in ages... And I never got a chance to try out odin. How well does it work?

I'm still using an older version of Odin, but I've used it to run the Win32 versions of Palm Desktop 3.1 plus various filters, IrfanView, and Adobe Acrobat Reader.

It fails with a lot of programs, though.

@steampoweredlawn

I just wish IBM would release the source code for the Workplace Shell, so someone could finally fix the message queue once and for all, and maybe even port the WPS to Linux.

It's currently being rewritten by the Netlabs folks.

http://wiki.netlabs.org/index.php/Voyager_FAQ

Edited 2006-12-17 18:09

>...recent announcement that Java and Flash are to be open-sourced...

Flash is going to be open-sourced??

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/press/mozilla-2006-11-07.html

I guess I misread the article, and Flash might not be released in it's entirety, but the core engine at least is being released.

and to Kancept, yes Flash and Java do exist for OS/2, but Flash support only goes up to version 7 and Java only up to 1.4.2, and it's more or less the Windows distro w/ an Odin wrapper. It's slow and very memory hungry. Would be nice to see a native port of Java 1.6

Flash only goes up to version 7 in any alt OS as well. Linux is only @ 7 IIRC. I think Win and OSX are the only ones at current.

As for Java, there are really 2 1.4.x implementations. One is an odin wrapped, the other is a port (from GoldenCode IIRC). One group is working on a native 1.6 release, but I haven't seen news on that in a while, only a bounty offered for it to be produced.

Not that I miss flash or newer java stuff in eCom anyhoo.

Flash only goes up to version 7 in any alt OS as well. Linux is only @ 7 IIRC. I think Win and OSX are the only ones at current.

That´s partially correct. The stable release of Flash Player in Linux indeed is 7.X but Adobe released the Beta of version 9 on Linux and it seems to be up to the snuff but I believe that they still need to iron out a few bugs here and there. See http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer9/

However, since it´s very unlikely that Adobe will port this version to other platforms, niches OSes best hope of use an up to date Flash Player is Gnash but it will need some time to it mature to the point of being usable on a daily basis.

I remember installing OS/2 Warp (3.0) on my computer at work (back then, it really was MY computer!). It was a 486 DX-2 66 with some ridiculously low amount of RAM, like 8 or 16 MB. I was playing around with Windows 3.1 support, and pulled my boss back to make him watch me run 32 separate Windows 3.1 programs at a time. When I tried to launch #33, OS/2 popped up a dialog that told me I had reached the limit for this Windows 3.1 session, but would I like to launch it in another session? Needless to say, my boss was totally blown away.

Yeah, I really loved OS/2 back in the day.

I just (this morning) requested the demo CD. The response was very fast, and I'm now running it on an older Dell Dimension XPS, P-III 733. For being CD-based, it is quite snappy. It found all of my hardware and came right up.

My only "complaint" is the resolution of the demo CD is limited to 1024x768@16 colors, but I noticed the installed version isn't.

Very nice indeed! I think I will have to see if I can get some money together after all! :-)