OS/2

From ArticleWorld

OS/2 was a joint effort by IBM and Microsoft to design an operating system for the IBM PC and compatibles. OS/2 was initially designed and written by Microsoft and IBM in a joint effort, but Microsoft abandoned the project and IBM continued it by themselves until 2001. It was withdrawn from sale in 2005, although an updated version called eComStation can be bought from Serenity Systems.

OS/2 was intended to be compatible with MS DOS and MS Windows. However, after an enthusiastic start, the project did not reach the expected success.

The project

OS/2 1.0 was released in 1987. It only had a text-mode console, but a complete and powerful API for controlling the video display, the mouse and keyboard was available. Version 1.1, released one year later, included the Presentation Manager, a desktop environment that featured proportional fonts and a look&feel quite similar to the one of Windows 3.0, which was to appear later. The HPFS filesystem was introduced in version 1.2.

OS/2 was seen as the operating system of the future, until the break-up that occurred in 1990. The API incompatibility, the high price of OS/2 (as opposed to the bundled Microsoft Windows), the weak backward compatibility and the focus on old hardware made Microsoft shift their focus to their own project, Microsoft Windows. OS/2 1 was a market failure. Microsoft was initially supposed to continue developing OS/2 3, with IBM developing OS/2 2 and maintaining version 1.x. This didn't happen, but some OS/2 code was initially used in Windows NT. OS/2 2.x could also run Windows 3.x applications.

Features

OS/2 2.0, the most widely used version, had a number of interesting features for its time. The most acclaimed was the 32-bit API for the native programs. The system itself was not purely 32-bit, but the API itself was appreciated and IBM encouraged developers to use it. OS/2 3.0 (Warp), featuring good hardware support and multimedia capabilities. Warp 4 added an excellent Java-based voice recognition support. The desktop environment was also appreciated by many. In fact, the underlying support is quite similar to that of X11, although not network transparent, and the DSOM system, a CORBA-based paradigm, is still considered an excellent design. OS/2 had its share of trouble (single input queue, the lack of unified command line and object handles) but most were worked around or solved eventually.

The end

IBM hasn't been able to promote OS/2 enough to make it a commercially competitive program at the end of the 1990s. Following IBM's focus shift towards Linux, the sales were stopped in December 2005, although updates are still available. IBM suggests its clients to step away from OS/2 though, and move to newer, better supported technologies including Java and Linux.

Many users have signed a petition asking IBM to release OS/2 under an open-source license, suggesting that those parts which are still under copyright could be rewritten by the open-source