On 2018-11-07 1:58 p.m., John Varela wrote:
On Tue, 6 Nov 2018 17:51:37 UTC, SilverSlimer
wrote:

On 2018-11-06 11:34 a.m., nospam wrote:
In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

My exposure to OS/2 was fairly limited as I only used it on shoddy
hardware and didn't do much with it but Peter Köhlmann around here in
comp.os.linux.advocacy seems to have very fond memories of it despite its
marketplace failure.

OS/2 ⤲ half an operating system?

Its name derives from the PS/2 and was meant to suggest that it would
work best on PS/2 devices which, I assume, IBM expected to have dominate
the computer space.

Looking back, the PS/2, as sturdy as it was, could not have dominated a
space in which computers like the Amiga and the Atari ST could do more
for a lot less money.

no they couldn't. those were toys.

1) Could you write essays and do spreadsheets on the Amiga or the Atari ST?
2) Could you edit graphics and make banners?
3) Could you play games in addition to doing useful work?

They might have served as a console to many people, but both computers
could still be as useful as a PS/2 was.

what killed it was that microsoft forced windows everywhere, often
illegally.

Windows was a non-factor when the PS/2 line was killed off. The reverse
engineering of the BIOS and the creation of the compatible PC did a lot
more than Windows could ever hope to do. The introduction of EISA as an
answer to MCA was pretty much the last nail in the coffin of the PS/2 if
not OS/2. What you're suggesting is only somewhat true of OS/2 but you
can't deny that Windows, while technically worse than OS/2, was more
than enough for regular users and often a much more interesting product.
For crying out loud, OS/2 banked on its Windows 3.1 compatibility to
sell copies and had little to no software written directly for it. Why
would you need OS/2 to run Windows 3.1 when you can just install Windows
3.1?

The reason I switched from DOS to OS/2 was that I needed access to
both a TCP/IP LAN and to Netware. I could do that with DOS by
swapping config.syses and autoexec.bats and rebooting but that was a
pain. OS/2 as early as v. 1 or 2 (I forget which) could run both
protocols simultaneously. I put OS/2 on my home computer(s) and
stayed with it until 2006, when I got an iMac. I am running OS/2
right now in a VM, because ProNews/2 is still my favorite news
reader.

I never had the chance to use OS/2 for any significant length of time
since my hardware - when OS/2 was still competing - wasn't good enough
to run it and because the system itself seemed fairly counterintuitive
to me. Add the fact that software was scarce and there truly was little
reason to use it, IMO. My experience with IBM itself, at the time, was
also fairly negative so I'm not convinced that the PC platform would
have been better off had it won the race over Windows either.


--
SilverSlimer
Proud recipient of special entitlements and fierce adversary of equal rights
Minds: @silverslimer