Don't Care?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| sbicknel Dec 24, 2005 3:21 PM EDT |
In 1992 OS/2's Workplace Shell graphical environment had features that still have not been implemented on any platform in any graphical environment. Many of its best features were directly ripped off by Microsoft and dismally implemented (Windows shortcuts vs. OS/2 shadows). Templates, which can be anything from single documents containing boilerplate text and graphics to entire folders containing other documents and templates, have never seen the light of day on another system, but are compelling features and a major reason OS/2 users are so loyal--even today. Its multi-threading support puts Linux to shame. Think about that the next time you wait while Firefox freezes when loading sites in background tabs. OS/2 users are able to continue using the browser. You don't care? Consider how much you care about free software as opposed to how many Windows users who couldn't care less. Do you dismiss them as being ignorant? Hmm... |
| jimf Dec 24, 2005 4:04 PM EDT |
Yeah, I gotta say I'd still like to see OS/2 open sourced... I just don't have much expectation of that happening. |
| tadelste Dec 25, 2005 7:43 AM EDT |
Quoting:Its multi-threading support puts Linux to shame. Hold your horses pardnar. OS/2 is 32 bit DOS and basically the same underbelly as Windows 95 with a different presentation manager. But, nothing about OS/2 puts Linux to shame. BTW, I spent time on the OS/2 team in both human factors and documentation. I know the product pretty well. I was also a Lan Server (OS/2 Server) admin. It improved on Windows 3.11 but doesn't come close to anything *NIX architecturally. |
| sbicknel Dec 25, 2005 10:58 AM EDT |
The multi-threading still provides a smoother user experience, which was my point about multi-threading. And my points about the user interface stand. There still is nothing in any graphic interface currently developed that comes close to the features I mentioned. |
| bloovis Dec 25, 2005 7:07 PM EDT |
Actually, the OS/2 kernel was an entirely new piece of code and had nothing in common with Win95 (which, like Win 3.1, was basically DOS with a Windows protected-mode shell). By contrast, OS/2 had a genuine protected-mode kernel with decent multi-threading support, as mentioned above. The threading and structured exception handling in NT were nearly identical to OS/2's. The OS/2 kernel was 16-bit code, but Warp had a 32-bit app environment built on top of it. The pre-Warp book "Inside OS/2" by Gordon Letwin has some useful information about the kernel design (and a now-ironic introduction by Bill Gates saying how OS/2 was the best thing since sliced bread). Warp also had a very nifty feature called SOM (System Object Model), which was far more elegant and efficient than Microsoft's COM. Briefly, it allowed for intermixing of multiple object-oriented languages and worked across the network nearly transparently. I worked for a company (MetaWare) that had a C++ compiler that emitted code for SOM directly. If nothing else of OS/2 survives besides SOM, that would be plenty. |
| tadelste Dec 26, 2005 7:55 AM EDT |
Quoting:Actually, the OS/2 kernel was an entirely new piece of code and had nothing in common with Win95 If I read this correctly, you assert that OS/2 was not 32-bit DOS and that the object model was not DCE. So, Presentation Manager versus gdi.exe wasn't the major difference in the two products? Interesting theory. |
| sbicknel Dec 26, 2005 10:42 AM EDT |
"If I read this correctly" Is there anything you DO read correctly? You claim to have worked on human factors and documentation and as an OS/2 admin, yet you don't know that OS/2 and 16 bit DOS are not from the same code base. Hmm.... Judging by all the comments you've made so far, you dismiss the value of OS/2 because it was written for 32 bit processors rather than 64 bit processors and you think it is basically a rebranded version of Windows 95. "Interesting theory." |
| tadelste Dec 26, 2005 11:49 AM EDT |
Don't take it as an insult. It wasn't meant to be disparaging. Sure I read things correctly. 32 bit DOS was written with 16 bit code and I know that. OS/2 - the operating system was originally called DOS. IBM renamed it to coincide with the release of the PS/2. Microsoft and IBM stopped working together on DOS at version 5 because Microsoft wanted to go in another direction. The first OS/2 didn't have a GUI. Check with http://www.answers.com/topic/os-2 OS/2 16-bit Version 1.x The first versions (1.0, 1.1, etc.) were written for the 16-bit 286. DOS compatibility was limited to about 500K. Version 1.3 (OS/2 Lite) required 2MB RAM instead of 4MB and included Adobe Type Manager. IBM's Extended Edition version included Communications Manager and Database Manager. OS/2 32-bit Version 2.x - IBM Introduced in April 1992, this 32-bit version for 386s from IBM multitasked DOS, Windows and OS/2 applications. Data could be shared between applications using the clipboard and between Windows and PM apps using the DDE protocol. Version 2.x provided each application with a 512MB virtual address space that allowed large tasks to be easily managed. Version 2.1 supported Windows' Enhanced Mode and applications could take full advantage of Windows 3.1. It also provided support for more video standards and CD-ROM drives. Communications and database management for OS/2 were provided by Communications Manager/2 (CM/2) and Database Manager/2 (DB2/2). CM/2 replaced Communications Manager, which was part of OS/2 2.0's Extended Services option. MS-DOS version 7 ran Windows 95. IBM didn't rebrand Windows 95 to create OS/2 because IBM and MS had long departed. Here's some interesting history about DOS: DOS 4.0 – July, 1988 Microsoft never got it right, and ended up purchasing several small DOS utility companies in order to get their technology and integrate it into DOS 5. DOS 5.0 – June, 1991 This included high memory support for Windows (you could access memory above 640k), multiple hard disks and 2.88mb floppies. The DOS 5 versions were very stable, and shipped with Windows 3.1 on hundreds of thousands of PCs in the early 90’s. DOS 6.0 – March, 1993 disk compression (Doublespace), multiple configurations in CONFIG.SYS. This was released when Windows 3.11(Windows for Workgroups) was released, making DOS 6.22 officially the last version of that could be purchased as a separate operating system. DOS 7.0 – December, 1995 Although this was never officially released, this was the version number that was reported when you typed the VER command from a DOS prompt in Windows 95. Although the Windows programs 3.1, 95,and 98 all appear to be operating systems, in fact, they all rely on the 16 bit DOS kernel to boot the PC before the Windows graphical user interface appears. This reliance on DOS is why we can safely use virtually any version of Windows to run the networking on our controllers, yet “drop to DOS” to run the older DOS controller software. From: http://www.bremson.com/hicks/support/docs/MicrosoftOSHistory... My reference was to OS/2 when it became a 32 bit OS which meant in ran in rings 0, 1 and 5 on x386 Intel architecture and could share the thread pre-emptively. |
| sbicknel Dec 27, 2005 12:08 AM EDT |
"OS/2 - the operating system was originally called DOS" Regardless of what it was called, and of who developed it, and how compatible with DOS (and later, Windows) it was, it was still not based on the MS-DOS code. The extended history lesson does not change that. "Microsoft and IBM stopped working together on DOS at version 5 because Microsoft wanted to go in another direction." More importantly, they stopped working together on OS/2, because Microsoft wanted to market Windows to existing DOS users. Each took the code developed at that point and did different things with it. IBM continued developing OS/2 and gave it a graphical interface strikingly similar to Windows 3.0, which is what Microsoft created with the gui code they jointly developed. Additionally, Microsoft created NT with the kernel code. From that point on each system developed into quite different products. Those points and yours notwithstanding, OS/2 was not based on MS-DOS, its multi-threading provides a smoother user experience than Linux, and its graphical environment had features which still have not been implemented anywhere else to this day. Nothing you've said changes that. It is a shame when interesting ideas embodied in code are discarded and forgotten, because the license forbids further development by those interested in it. It probably won't be released as open source, especially since Serenity Systems markets a version of it. Perhaps IBM will transfer OS/2 to them. That seems more likely, though still remote. But proprietary code in the hands of companies on shaky financial ground has a habit of disappearing, so I don't think transferring it to Serenity Systems would help OS/2 all that much. But the user interface design ideas OS/2 could contribute to the open source community would be worthwhile, which is why I believe taking a "don't care" attitude is a mistake. It throws out the cool user interface baby with the "32 bit DOS" bath water. I'd like to see KDE or GNOME implement OS/2's templates and shadows. Those features were cool beyond anything available now and they would raise the bar on user interface design to levels not seen since OS/2. They would help distinguish any environment that had them from all-comers. I don't think implementing them, especially shadows, would be a simple matter, and having OS/2's code to work from could only help. But that's just one guy's opinion; if enough people thought those features were worth the development effort, they probably would already be part of one or the other of those environments. It's just sad that no one seems to care enough to re-use those ideas. They made using OS/2 fun. |
| jimf Dec 27, 2005 1:04 AM EDT |
This is a pretty accurate history of OS/2 development: http://www.millennium-technology.com/HistoryOfOS2.html These are some of the features of OS/2. Please note that although OS/2 can read a Dos partition, the preferred format is HPFS: http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/file_systems_os2.h... NT is indeed NOT related to OS/2: http://www.ntsecrets.com/info/whatisit.htm |
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