No discussion can be had of Microsoft alternatives without mentioning OS/2. Until Microsoft shipped Windows 2000 Professional, OS/2 4.0 was probably my desktop OS of choice. For the purposes of this section, I’m referring to OS/2 2.0 and later, not IBM and Microsoft’s ill fated OS/2 1.x series.
One final bit of OS/2 trivia. Microsoft co-developed OS/2 1.x with IBM. When IBM and Microsoft got ‘divorced’ in the late 80’s, Microsoft took its part of the code for what was to become OS/2 3.0 on the IBM/Microsoft product roadmap and created Windows NT 3.1, which today lives on as Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.
IBM billed OS/2 as being a “Better DOS than DOS” and a “Better Windows than Windows”. Anyone who ever ran OS/2 knows that IBM largely succeeded. From a technical perspective, OS/2 was much more solid than DOS, Windows 3.x or even Windows 9x.
OS/2 had many innovations that we come to view as standard equipment in an OS today. OS/2 was the first major 32-bit operating system. It was completely multi-threaded. Its HPFS file system resisted fragmentation and could natively support large filenames. OS/2 was the first major OS to integrate a Web browser into the operating system. It was also the first operating system to offer voice-control.
There are many reasons why OS/2 failed. Windows 95 came out and even though OS/2 was more stable, its inability to run Win32 API-based programs doomed it. It ran DOS and Windows 3.1 programs so well, ISVs never had an incentive to create native OS/2 programs. Microsoft’s licensing scheme with OEMs discouraged hardware vendors, including IBM itself, from bundling OS/2. It didn’t help that IBM couldn’t market OS/2 to save its life.
Even though the last version of OS/2 shipped in 1996, IBM continued to support OS/2 until December 31, 2006. Many OS/2 supporters have tried to get IBM to release OS/2’s source code for open source development, but IBM refuses. Supposedly this is due to some of the Microsoft code that still exists in OS/2 that IBM has exclusive rights to. At the same time however, IBM licensed OS/2 to Serenity Systems who continue to support, upgrade, and extend OS/2 in their own product called eComStation. Below is a screen shot of eCS from my test machine:
One final bit of OS/2 trivia. Microsoft co-developed OS/2 1.x with IBM. When IBM and Microsoft got ‘divorced’ in the late 80’s, Microsoft took its part of the code for what was to become OS/2 3.0 on the IBM/Microsoft product roadmap and created Windows NT 3.1, which today lives on as Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.
Every OS/2 user’s favorite quote from Bill Gates is, of course: “We believe OS/2 is the platform for the 90’s.”
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