Submitted by Les Bell has released (Jan 2012) his course material “Introduction to OS/2 Warp Programming” under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. The course had been released with its original files, OOXML, ODF, PDF version and lab exercises.
Now if only IBM would do the same with OS/2…
OS/2 was nice, but its time is long gone.
While this maybe useful if you are on a Legacy System … some things are better left forgotten.
I disagree, but together we make the world go round.
Imagine what could be done with it in an open source community. It can still perform the basic things any other operating system can perform… and it is already written, just needs some “help” to modernize it.
I wonder what ever happened to the Voyager project?
I’m guessing pretty much the same thing the greater OSS community does with Symbian or GEM… (or maybe, at best, with Allegiance or Warzone 2100 – just two “closed -> OSS” games I’m familiar with; the first one from Microsoft, BTW)
…not so much what happens with Blender, id game engines, Star Office, or Mozilla (hm, maybe some pattern emerges here, maybe closed -> open OS have a harder time for some reason; I think the biggest success of such is Solaris, and this one’s still a bit 50/50; now that I think about it, id engines are a bit similar – sure, fun tech, used here and there for nice things, but relatively limited overall impact)
O.K. Mr. Negativity.
Well, most of my previous post just mentions straightforward facts (but tell me, did you remember that Symbian and GEM* can be had under OSS licenses, while sort of wishing there about some 2nd youth for OS/2?), it’s grounded in reality (and IMHO using it as a guide to judge new possibilities is useful; for one, it’s generally nicer to allocate scarce resources where it makes most sense)
*they also ~”can still perform the basic things any other operating system can perform… and it is already written, just needs some “help” to modernize it”
Edited 2012-01-30 21:48 UTC
Neither of those operating systems were in the same category as OS/2. I love VMS… but I’d hardly be running it at home (tho’ admittedly I would love to
).
[edit]
I should qualify what I mean… I mean symbian being mobile and GEM is more of a UI layer on top of an existing core OS, or am I mistaken?
Either way, I could be revealing my own personal bias for desktop and mainframe operating systems.
Edited 2012-01-31 00:11 UTC
Just came back from a vacation in the Philippines, while on Cebu I came across an ATM that is still using OS/2 Warp, the ATM was far from old but it shows how solid the OS still is today. Why IBM will not release it is beyond me since they have said they have no intention of doing anything with it.
Which wasn’t that unusual …OS/2 (initially at least) wasn’t far from it, IIRC. Plus: isn’t modularity good, isn’t random DE + Linux just like that?
(though I associate GEM more as “the” OS of 16bit Atari)
Anyway, I’m not sure if that different – OK, GEM is sort of not relevant for a long time. But whatever its technical characteristics are, it was open sourced many years ago – when, at the end of 90s, it was approximately as disconnected from contemporary developments as OS/2 would be now… perhaps not that different category.
With Symbian… there aren’t that many ~mature open source mobile OS – but seemingly it took only the earlier (open) existence of Android to steal virtually whole community momentum, and make other (not only Symbian) not very viable.
Yeah (@edit), depends which aspect we look at (so we might show pretty much anything
). I could be revealing my personal bias, my views that came after some years of toying with various niche tech (also operating systems) – namely how it perhaps matters more what we do via technology, instead of with the technology itself.
BTW viability – while making sure I didn’t confuse things with Atari I clicked also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiNT
Srsly, WTH? :p
And I think I stumbled once at least at one OS/2 reimplementation “project” (change log didn’t look encouraging) in the style of Haiku. It didn’t look very sustainable.
Also, add RISC OS to that short list, it’s also kinda being open sourced, I think, some limited revival.
Still, dead or dying (or at least without forward momentum); don’t expect comebacks after “just a little work” (that’s usually the sentiment, it seems) as OSS – it would have to be a major undertaking (and most likely having problems attracting enough competent devs – I guess many of them also not seeing much point to direct their efforts where they would be felt by very few)
So many people say that, yet it still to this day had GUI features non existent in todays OSes (Mac, Windows, Linux etc.)
Yes, I was part of Team OS/2, yes I got my gold pin of excellence, and yes I did extensive demos of the OS/2 Warp GUI at various computer shows.
A famous demo I loved to do (one of many). Drag a fax template onto the desktop to start a fax document. Double click to open and edit the fax. Open the Address Book app and drag a name from there and drop it on the fax document icon. The fax number is now extracted and attached to the fax document (this is show via an attached business card on the icon too). Drag the fax document and drop it on the Modem icon. My fax is sent! That’s an Object Oriented desktop, that is true drag-and-drop support. Still no existing OS, other that OS/2, can do this.
It’s such a pity IBM screwed OS/2.
But then, there are so many examples of superior software that didn’t make it – simply due to a crap marketing team.
RISCOS.
Well, it is your darling from the younger years, after all…
OTOH, some nice features here and there could be found in almost everything; and OS/2 was sort of a bit of a turd, too (like pretty much everything back then)
This example you gave – I always hated with a passion (like many, I think; maybe most?) dragging UI paradigms, especially in times of old ball mouses, always clogging themselves in the worst possible moment (and even now, in times of optical, I really prefer to avoid such).
RISC OS also had it similarly irritating (actually it almost depended on drag’n’drop, only later releases reintroduced more “normal” approaches – by popular demand, I believe). It’s IMHO a bad way to set up things – two precise actions at the same time, with one hand, and if it gets interrupted the results are a bit unpredictable (who knows where you’ll drop the grabbed thing); justifiably underutilized (something close does seem decent on touchscreens of today – that’s where the biggest progress is happening now BTW, and it’s something from which OS/2 is even more disconnected)
Anyway, we have the rather nice NT part of that past chapter (and Windows element got decent)
I actually like[d] the drag and drop aspect… This is a case of what you like vs. what someone else likes. In other words, yeah you are most certainly welcomed to your opinion and yours is the one that matters most to you.
Every operating system/UI has strengths and weaknesses.
Yeah, that was kinda the point… it isn’t something what makes OS/2 inherently superior, it’s just something the parent poster loves and that’s it (a love seemingly not shared by too many, seeing where UI paradigms went; it is prudent to simply take note of that when chatting about OS history)
Edited 2012-01-30 21:50 UTC
I think the failure of the UI paradigm in this case was as one of the posters said the fault of IBM. They truly dropped the ball with marketing and target audience.
They weren’t the only ones using this paradigm (for example, the mentioned RISC OS) – which, actually, is also available for a long time, to some degree, in the “winning” Windows. Where drag’n’drop also seems somewhat underutilized, used in quite limited degree (I’m positive that expecting from people to use it, when training etc., brings… disasters)
I believe market interest in OS/2 always appeared much smaller than in Windows, even without dirty tricks of MS or IBM ineptitude …however painful it might be to admit, maybe Win just fit much better overall.
Yes, OS/2 had some niceties – and some weaknesses, which by themselves would be quite possibly enough.
Lagging in hardware support for example (in times when PCs were more chaotic) – maybe IBM wanted OS/2 to drive sales of its hw …well, tough luck (and at some late point they were essentially giving it away IIRC; too late / nobody wanted it). IIRC also “hanging” UI design (yes, I think it was fixed later – but after the times when it had a chance) or unusually allergic, filesystem-wise, to resets or power cuts.
And I think that dragging was done by right mouse button – why? / that goes into habits & nostalgia*
Again with the example of parent poster: why dragging the recipient into fax? (you don’t send the first to the 2nd, but the opposite) Shouldn’t that add info about the recipient into the text of the fax? (or maybe… why not show a ~menu will previous communication?). Or why “Drag a fax template onto the desktop” starts a fax document? (why not creates a copy of the template, to be edited and used later? Why not a shortcut or symbolic link? Would it be worse?)
So it’s not only about awkwardness of dragging per se, but about how arbitrary actions it tends to have attached to the same kind of action / movement, without much of an indication what will happen.
Generally, one more observation about this model: pushing for its usage tends to end in such absurdities as dragging a floppy to the bin, to eject it
*with “past & rose-coloured glasses” look also at the nearby post of Lorin, about how using OS/2 in ATMs “shows how solid the OS still is today”…
…or maybe it all comes down to how IBM was a precursor of ATMs, and very involved / cooperating / part-owning / etc. some of the major ATM manufacturers?
(and then, ATMs also run many older Windows versions, even ~DOS variants, I believe)
Edited 2012-02-07 00:19 UTC
For me the only good thing about OS/2 was the object desktop and the SOM component model.
Unfortunately the remaining APIs were not that different from Win16/Win32s at the time.
+1000000000000
It will take some work to get in up to date again. But man, it will shine!
Yeah! Imagine it running on those new Amigas with the new PowerPC processor.
Oh man, oh man. 32bits, risc, and multitasking. The 90s are going to be awesome!!!
When programmers will real men. 64k segments and far pointers!
I still remember my first brush with OS/2 16-bit. Radio Shack had technical staff come to their stores in those days. The guy showed me the difference between OS/2 and Windows at that time. They both looked the same. I was hooked. Ironically, I never found a copy of it on shelves for my Tandy 2500XL. ಠ_à²
OS/2 2.x and up were nice but didn’t have same feel to it.
Ha! Awesome.
I kind of miss Radio Shack. Then again I also miss the ACE Hardware that was down the street… just closed. Couldn’t compete with WalMart and Home Depot. 
I gave both Radio Shack and Ace as much of my business I could.
Back in the days when Warp came out, I purchased a special Warp system from Indelible Blue… Even after I moved on to other hardware that system was going strong… gave it to my brother in law.
All you needed was the term “thunking”, and you would have had the trifecta of old school fun.
The other day I was unlucky enough to catch my ATM midway a refill with a bank agent attending it. After reloading the machine he said I could use it in a few seconds, after reboot, and I should watch the screen to know when it’s ready. I was expecting a windows, Linux or some other boot to take place.
But to my suprise I saw the machine runs on IBM OS/2.
Most of the ATM’s my credit union has around town still run OS/2. There are only two that run Windows.
I’ve been waiting for this for 18 years, when I got my Highscreen Vobis Pentium 60 with OS/2 Warp included! Yuppie!
The bad part is that it wasn’t pre-installed, because people didn’t know what to do with OS/2 and brought the computers back to the shop. So the shop staff began to format them before selling and installed MSDOS 6 and Windows. MSDOS was not licensed, obviously…
I tried to install OS/2 by myself, but I didn’t have the driver for my CD drive
OS/2 will always remain one my favourite OS’s of all time. It was vastly superior to the DOS/Windows combo most people used at the time, especially from a technical standpoint but also from a usability point of view as well.
In its prime, it could handle almost anything thrown at it, and its very true that it ran Windows and DOS apps better than Windows itself ever did. In the early 2000’s a business I worked for were still using OS/2 as print servers alongside the NT file servers.
Unfortunately it was plagued right from the start, not just from a lack of decent marketing on IBM’s part but also from technical issues which really should never have been there. Even in many of IBM’s own tech demos, the system hard locked and had to be manually restarted to continue the demo. It was even more of a nightmare for end users. OS/2 was just too fussy about hardware and IBM’s drivers never provided the rock solid foundation they should have done. I’ll always remember being shipped an OS/2 Warp 3 CD which refused to install on my test machine because it required updated CD drivers (to support the IDE CD drive I was using, which it should be noted worked perfectly under even the oldest supported DOS/Windows versions) so I had to manually create boot disks using updated drivers supplied in fixpaks.
Anyway despite its flaws, OS/2 is and always will be up there with the best, I just wish IBM would do it justice and release it open source and let it shine once again.
W8, so you say how OS/2 “was vastly superior to the DOS/Windows combo most people used at the time, especially from a technical standpoint but also from a usability point of view as well”…
…and then you spend most of your post mentioning its “technical issues which really should never have been there” clearly impacting also overall usability (and of a kind & severity rivaling most troublesome DOS/Windows adventures), showing how it didn’t quite measure up after all?
In light of that – I’d say yours “despite its flaws, OS/2 is and always will be up there with the best” would apply just as much, if not more, to DOS/Windows…
Edited 2012-02-04 17:25 UTC
OS/2 is still around, and being sold, which is why I don’t think IBM will release it open source anytime soon.
http://www.ecomstation.com/
They’re using base 4.52 IIRC, and have added stuff to it. Note that you cannot buy it directly from them, they sell via resellers. Most sell turnkey kits, but at least one sells just the software.