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.
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Hi Eugenia,
I am a satisfied long time OS/2 user (since v2.0). I have to say I really
enjoyed your article, most of all because it is a well balanced report from a
new user. There are a few minor mistakes, but other have already pointed them
out.
I would like to comment on the "not real time" assumption you made, not knowing
on what you're basing it. OS/2 DOES have a near real-time kernel, and it
specifically has a priority level that's called "real-time foreground server".
Applications that run with that priority level can effectively defeat the
preemption mechanism to achieve real-time performance. Because of this, you will
find virtually no applications that make use of this priority level, apart for
some specialized privately-written apps. At least, this is what I learnt from
some literature... if anyone has more infos please jump in.
As for the MIDI and multimedia performance, I think it's better to separate the
"no applications" (or "no good applications") issue from the "technical" issue.
I think OS/2 can do more or less what BeOS does (try playing multiple
audio/video streams on a simple pentium and you'll see), and it has a RTMIDI
(real time MIDI) subsystem to address very precise MIDI reproduction. On the
other hand, OS/2 really misses a good MIDI-writing app (there is a good one, I
don't remember the name, but it's not on par with Windows ones feature-wise) and
a few modern audio/video codecs. There was one audio/video professional editing
tool, but they stopped development due to low sales.
Bye
Cris