Personal computing discussed
whm1974 wrote:https://www.arcanoae.com/blue-lion/
A new version of OS/2 is going to be released this year by Arca Noae, and all of this time I thought it was almost dead. And it is supposed to be able to run ported Linux apps as well. Now I will probably keep an eye on this, but I really don't see the point of this considering that IBM pulled the plug on OS/2 back in 1996. Is there a market for this product?
Captain Ned wrote:OS/2 was a damn good project/product that ran into the fundamental dichotomy between the IBM vision of software selling hardware (or, preferably, leasing it) and the MS vision of universal software just as Win 3.0 started grabbing market share, causing MS to pull out of the joint development project.. It was one of the early wake-up calls to IBM's command/control mind set.
hansmuff wrote:I heard it was not hanging the OS but just the workplace shell. I never did find out how to restart the shell without rebooting the entire OS.OS/2.. awwwwww yeeeeehhh
So what what cool about OS/2? The WPS (workplace shell) (the desktop environment) was neat. You could do all sorts of customization that even Win10 won't do. Bitmaps for folder backgrounds for instance. Cool ****.
What was not cool? The SIQ (single input queue) hanging the OS for trivial ****. I think that was resolved in ECS but I've never seen it.
I loved OS/2 back then. Not sure it's still up to prime.
Aranarth wrote:I found this to be true also. I could host two instances of Win3.1 to run two different instrument AD cards both receiving 60 data points per second from two instruments and it was far more stable than trying to run both instruments from within one Win3.1 session.OS/2 is coming back!
No it ain't!
I used os/2 v2 and v3 and while it was a good OS there really wasn't anything you could DO with it if you were a teenager wanting to play games.
It was definitely more stable at running windows 3.0 and 3.1 apps than windows was....
Captain Ned wrote:The best part of OS/2, just like Novell NetWare 3.x, is its absolute rock-solid stability and refusal to go down short of power failure (from which it gracefully restarts). One of my regulated entities still offers telephone touch-tone banking (on-line, just through Ma Bell and the keypad). The box that handles the little traffic that service gets runs OS/2 and has been sitting like an abandoned puppy in a corner of the server room for about 20 years. It's paid for many times over, so there's no business case to kill the service.
OS/2 was a damn good project/product that ran into the fundamental dichotomy between the IBM vision of software selling hardware (or, preferably, leasing it) and the MS vision of universal software just as Win 3.0 started grabbing market share, causing MS to pull out of the joint development project.. It was one of the early wake-up calls to IBM's command/control mind set.
pikaporeon wrote:funny you mention POWER - Canada's largest grocery chain uses it a ton on the backend powering Oracle DBs - was my first job out of college supporting that, I felt so cool.
Doctor Venture wrote:Didn't one of Google's Chief Data Center Architects (or maybe the CTO) go on record as saying they'd LOVE to switch over to Power-based systems?
whm1974 wrote:Due to the lack of support and the really ancient hardware OS/2 runs on, wouldn't it current users be way better off getting new hardware and switching over to BSD or Linux? Hardware support wasn't all that great to begin with and it is a huge nightmare trying to find still working 90's era systems that will run OS/2.
just brew it! wrote:whm1974 wrote:Due to the lack of support and the really ancient hardware OS/2 runs on, wouldn't it current users be way better off getting new hardware and switching over to BSD or Linux? Hardware support wasn't all that great to begin with and it is a huge nightmare trying to find still working 90's era systems that will run OS/2.
You've completely missed the point. The only compelling reason to run it is because you've got legacy OS/2 apps that won't run on anything else. BSD or Linux won't help you with that.
whm1974 wrote:Maybe I did, but they be better off developing applications for BSD and Linux that can read data formats used by OS/2 applications? It just a matter of time before hardware that old quits working.
whm1974 wrote:just brew it! wrote:whm1974 wrote:Due to the lack of support and the really ancient hardware OS/2 runs on, wouldn't it current users be way better off getting new hardware and switching over to BSD or Linux? Hardware support wasn't all that great to begin with and it is a huge nightmare trying to find still working 90's era systems that will run OS/2.
You've completely missed the point. The only compelling reason to run it is because you've got legacy OS/2 apps that won't run on anything else. BSD or Linux won't help you with that.
Maybe I did, but they be better off developing applications for BSD and Linux that can read data formats used by OS/2 applications? It just a matter of time before hardware that old quits working.
just brew it! wrote:@whm1974 - You're still missing the point. I give up.
Redocbew wrote:whm1974 wrote:just brew it! wrote:You've completely missed the point. The only compelling reason to run it is because you've got legacy OS/2 apps that won't run on anything else. BSD or Linux won't help you with that.
Maybe I did, but they be better off developing applications for BSD and Linux that can read data formats used by OS/2 applications? It just a matter of time before hardware that old quits working.
Tell that to the people who investigated the Pioneer anomaly. They had a standing offer to buy 1970s era hardware even up until just a few years ago so they could analyze the data they had. Chances were very poor that they were going to get any more data back from the spacecraft, and they would have needed the old hardware to verify that any new applications worked properly anyway.
whm1974 wrote:Just watched a video review of the new ArcaOS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PZE_swqO5U
38 minutes long however. I have half a mind to buy a copy and either run it in a VM or buy one of those cheap refubs from Newegg to check out it. Reportedly this thing flies on the low end and/or old hardware we tend to sneer at.
just brew it! wrote:whm1974 wrote:Just watched a video review of the new ArcaOS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PZE_swqO5U
38 minutes long however. I have half a mind to buy a copy and either run it in a VM or buy one of those cheap refubs from Newegg to check out it. Reportedly this thing flies on the low end and/or old hardware we tend to sneer at.
Unless you've got old OS/2 applications you want to run, I don't see much point other than historical curiosity.
whm1974 wrote:just brew it! wrote:whm1974 wrote:Just watched a video review of the new ArcaOS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PZE_swqO5U
38 minutes long however. I have half a mind to buy a copy and either run it in a VM or buy one of those cheap refubs from Newegg to check out it. Reportedly this thing flies on the low end and/or old hardware we tend to sneer at.
Unless you've got old OS/2 applications you want to run, I don't see much point other than historical curiosity.
Yeah I know what you mean. The apps I did have I threw out a long time go, and the only reason I would buy this is just to see what they managed to with it.