OS/2
OS/2 should have been the next-generation operating system for the PC
after DOS. It was originally a joint production
of IBM and Microsoft, but the two companies had different priorities.
Bill Gates wanted to skip the 286 entirely, since it could not support
true multitasking of DOS programs, and make OS/2 a 32-bit operating
system for the 386 from the beginning. IBM however had promised their
customers a multitasking OS for the AT and had a company policy of
keeping promises even if it made no economic sense. Besides, they had
a license to produce 286 themselves.
IBM and Microsoft split in 1990. Microsoft released Windows 3.0,
which did everything OS/2 was supposed to do, and had better hardware
support. A month after IBM finally released the first 32-bit OS/2 (2.0),
Windows 3.1, with full multimedia support, was launched. A year later
Windows NT followed, a standalone 32-bit operating system influenced
by VMS.
IBM was not very good at marketing OS/2. A persistant rumor that it
would run on original IBM hardware only, or even only on
PS/2 machines, didn't help. Though this rumor was
unfounded, hardware compatibility remained a problem for OS/2. It was
something of a minor player into the early millennium. It always had
its ardent fans who claimed it was vastly superior over Windows, and
conspiracy theories about its lack of success abound.
Personally I have very little experience with OS/2. I found a complete
set of Warp installation disks but never managed to actually install it
on anything. Now I have a PS/2 77 with 2.1
installed, so I'll finally be able to form a first-hand opinion.
Version History
- 1.0 (Dec. 1987)
- Command-line interface. Runs in protected mode only
and supports up to 16MB RAM. Hard drive partitions only up to 32MB. This
was actually a three-year-late OS for the 286.
- 1.1 (late 1988)
- Introduces the
Presentation Manager,
a GUI
that looks exactly like Windows 2.x.
The file system now supports Big FAT
partitions up to 2GB. This
version includes one game, Brick Walls,
a
Breakout clone.
- 1.2 (late 1989)
- Introduces HPFS, with partitions up to 64GB and file
names up to 255 characters (including spaces—arrrgh!). Like the MacOS,
it has
extended attributes
and can store icons or descriptions along
with a file. Icons can have 16 colors now, the GUI looks just like Windows 3.0.
- 1.3 (1991)
- Few changes. OS/2 still supports only 16MB of physical RAM.
- 2.0 (March 1992)
- The first 32bit OS/2, and the first with a GUI
different from Windows. Besides that it had excellent DOS support and you
could run Windows 3.0 applications out of it if you installed it over Windows.
It came with the Reversi game already
known from the early Windows versions.
- 2.1 (May 1993)
- The only thing really new in this version was the
Multimedia Presentation Manager/2, with sound card support for the first
time. This version came on 23 floppy disks.
- Warp 3 (October 1994)
- Better multimedia support, Internet.
A full install takes up nearly twice as much
disk space as 2.1 (55 instead of 30MB), but apart from that, it runs
better on low resources. It came on 39 floppies (including the BonusPak)
or on a CD, a first for OS/2 (and probably for operating systems in
general).
- Warp 4 (September 1996)
- Just minor improvements. This version was still sold by IBM in the early
millennium. Support ended with the end of 2006. It fills two CDs.
Links
Last modified 2010-12-28