Thanks for the comments, it's always educational to get the viewpoints and
experiences from others, on items that are "shared ground".
I didn't mean to come off like an OS/2 fanatic. I started using OS/2 around
1990, early 1991 at the latest, and short of Unix (I wasn't a Unix fanatic at
the time, although I was coming up to speed), I still judge OS/2 to be one of
the better x86 options for the early and mid 1990's. Its a given here that you
looked at the software you wanted to run, then purchased the appropriate
hardware accordingly.
Thanks for the reminder on the Arca Noae, I'm sure I had read that previously,
then just selectively chose to drop it from memory. I haven't used OS/2, or its
derivatives, exclusively on a day-to-day basis since probably 1997 or 1998 at
the latest.
On 07/14/16 04:53 PM, Swift Griggs wrote:
In defense of OS/2, I went from straight DOS to OS/2 1.3. I was taking
a lot of college programming classes, and in Assembly language
specifically, I found any number of ways to blow things up and loose my
work. OS/2 truly provided a "better DOS than DOS", and I could blow up
a DOS session with my Assembly code and go right on working.
I had similar experiences with DOS and something called DESQview/X. I
think it was made by Quarterdeck Systems. I didn't know squat about UNIX
or XDMCP at the time, but it was still beyond awesome to me to be able to
run a DOS window and do something uber-stupid in Lattice-C or Borland and
watch it gracefully recover. So, I can emphatically understand what you
mean.
OTOH, how many word processors/spreadsheets/presentation programs does
one need per OS?
Fair point, but choice is good, too.
From a technical perspective, the only big problem I had with OS/2, back
in the 1990's, was the single thread input queue on the new OOUI, WPS
(Work Place Shell).
That's inside baseball to me. I'll take your word for it.
OS/2 is now sold under the name "eComStation" and boots from JFS2
volumes.
You probably already know, but it seems there is another one now, too,
based on ECS:
https://www.arcanoae.com/blue-lion-go/
Also FYI, just to be super-clear, I didn't mean to bash or attack OS/2. I
was just saying I'm too ignorant about it to make a judgment and IBM
burned me too much to care. However, for all I know it's super-awesome.
-Swift
