Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Tue 4th Dec 2001 17:47 UTC
IBM's OS/2 has a great history as a workstation operating system, it was a major alternative OS in the '90s. At its peak time in the mid-'90s OS/2 had about 2 million users but the Windows NT and Windows 95 releases broke its further development. This year Serenity Systems has released a new client version of OS/2. This article will introduce you to what OS/2 is all about. You will learn its history, its user interface, and its power under the hood. The article is also accompanied by a number of screenshots.
Permalink for comment
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Recent Original Stories
Recent Comments
Headlines
Random Comments
Random Stories
Random OS Link
At home I am operating OS/2 since about 1992, currently Warp 4 and waiting for the upgrade to eCS 1 (german language version). At work I am developing mostly with WindowsNT, sometimes with Windows2000 (probably soon also with XP) and with Linux, so this is the range of GUI experience I am having every day.
My feeling about "modern" and "outdated" GUI is that the Linux guys are just trying to imitate the Windows look and feel somehow, so that cannot be "ahead" (yet??). And at the same time I am asking myself: Why on earth don't the new Windows versions bring any REAL functional improvements for the GUI, like I am used to for years already with OS/2, but constantly further evolving with all kinds of third party products?
Already the missing "virtual desktops" with the possibility to drag windows from one to the other, so always having an accessible desktop available, even if I am having tons of applications open ("ObjectDesktop" brings that). Or the unability to turn of the automatic opening of menus when moving over them (I am not such a mouse acrobat that I can keep a menu easily open if I want to hit a specific submenu; they are constantly closing before I am there... And no: "TweakUI" doesn't do the job, or not without breaking the menu functionality of MS VisualStudio...). Or dragging a file icon into a command line window and getting the full path there in a command ("DragText"). Or the inverse: Open a WPS folder from the command line, opened in the "current folder". Or dragging the text from almost ANY window or dialog to almost everywhere else, mostly performing a useful task (again "DragText"). And many, many more things. And even without open-sourcing the PM and WPS etc., this set of features can be extended by any third party programmer, and this is what happens indeed.
Or in short: I am always feeling like going back to the stone age when sitting down at my working place computer. You can work that way, but "comfortable" would be different! At least I have other expectations.
My guess is that the only reason why people do not miss all these GUI features is simply the fact that nobody knows it, so there is no real incentive for MS to really do any further GUI development (except for gimmicks, more colors, other "styles" etc. of course).