3 ms·

I was not aware that NT shared OS/2 lineage.

acdha 5y ago
There was even an OS/2 subsystem allowing you to run 16-bit OS/2 programs which wasn’t phased out until the Windows XP era. Almost nobody used it but there must have been some large customers insisting on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT
lproven 5y ago
Oh yes. It was widely-known and acknowledged at the time but it's forgotten now. • OS/2 version 1.x: 80286, 16-bit, only a single DOS session. Cannot run Windows apps, but can run "family apps" -- binaries compiled to execute natively as DOS apps on DOS and OS/2 apps on OS/2. • OS/2 version 2.x: 80386, 32-bit, true DOS multitasking alongside OS/2 text-mode and Presentation Manager GUI multitasking. Can boot DOS in a VM, and also run a modified copy of Windows 3 inside a VM allowing 16-bit Windows apps to run on the OS/2 desktop alongside native OS/2 apps. Marketed as OS/2 v2.0, 2.1, and later as "Warp 3", "Warp 4" and "Warp Server". Licensed to 3rd parties as eComStation (from Mensys, a PDP-11 tools vendor) and later as Blue Lion. • OS/2 version 3: unfinished, planned to be CPU-independent, able run on various RISC chips (e.g. IBM POWER, SUN SPARC, MIPS etc.) as well as x86. OS/2 3 was substantially rewritten and completed by Cutler and team using a lot of VMS ideas, technologies and terminology as OS/2 NT, later Windows NT. NT for "New Technology" was a backronym. NT 3.1, 3.5 and 3.51 contained an "OS/2 subsystem" and were able to execute text-mode 16-bit OS/2 binaries natively. They could also format and read/write hard disk partitions in OS/2 HPFS format. NT 4 removed the ability to handle HPFS but the 3.51 SP5 HPFS driver could be installed and used to access HPFS partitions, but not create them. Windows 2000 removed the OS/2 subsystem completely. • IBM Workplace OS/2 for POWER: a largely unrelated OS, running on top of the same Mach microkernel used in Mac OS X, with an OS/2-compatible userland on top. Able to run 16-bit and 32-bit OS/2 x86 binaries under emulation as well as native POWER binaries.
temac 5y ago
Well they do not really share that much given none of the OS/2 that shipped were based on NT, although that was the plan at the beginning of the dev of NT, and first versions of NT had a (quite limited) OS/2 subsystem. So there may have been some influences, but the target "quickly" switched to Win32 anyway.

There was even an OS/2 subsystem allowing you to run 16-bit OS/2 programs which wasn’t phased out until the Windows XP era. Almost nobody used it but there must have been some large customers insisting on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT

lproven 5y ago

Oh yes. It was widely-known and acknowledged at the time but it's forgotten now. • OS/2 version 1.x: 80286, 16-bit, only a single DOS session. Cannot run Windows apps, but can run "family apps" -- binaries compiled to execute natively as DOS apps on DOS and OS/2 apps on OS/2. • OS/2 version 2.x: 80386, 32-bit, true DOS multitasking alongside OS/2 text-mode and Presentation Manager GUI multitasking. Can boot DOS in a VM, and also run a modified copy of Windows 3 inside a VM allowing 16-bit Windows apps to run on the OS/2 desktop alongside native OS/2 apps. Marketed as OS/2 v2.0, 2.1, and later as "Warp 3", "Warp 4" and "Warp Server". Licensed to 3rd parties as eComStation (from Mensys, a PDP-11 tools vendor) and later as Blue Lion. • OS/2 version 3: unfinished, planned to be CPU-independent, able run on various RISC chips (e.g. IBM POWER, SUN SPARC, MIPS etc.) as well as x86. OS/2 3 was substantially rewritten and completed by Cutler and team using a lot of VMS ideas, technologies and terminology as OS/2 NT, later Windows NT. NT for "New Technology" was a backronym. NT 3.1, 3.5 and 3.51 contained an "OS/2 subsystem" and were able to execute text-mode 16-bit OS/2 binaries natively. They could also format and read/write hard disk partitions in OS/2 HPFS format. NT 4 removed the ability to handle HPFS but the 3.51 SP5 HPFS driver could be installed and used to access HPFS partitions, but not create them. Windows 2000 removed the OS/2 subsystem completely. • IBM Workplace OS/2 for POWER: a largely unrelated OS, running on top of the same Mach microkernel used in Mac OS X, with an OS/2-compatible userland on top. Able to run 16-bit and 32-bit OS/2 x86 binaries under emulation as well as native POWER binaries.

temac 5y ago

Well they do not really share that much given none of the OS/2 that shipped were based on NT, although that was the plan at the beginning of the dev of NT, and first versions of NT had a (quite limited) OS/2 subsystem. So there may have been some influences, but the target "quickly" switched to Win32 anyway.