8 ms·

OS/2 failed because of IBM’s abysmal marketing, not because it was inferior tech.

chasil 4y ago
OS/2 was forced down to 80286 compatibility for version 1.1. That was major design damage, required by IBM because most of the PS/2 line was on this CPU. Both Linux and NT required an 80386 with a flat memory model. On capable hardware, this was far superior. Both Linux and NT quickly ran on multiple platforms besides x86. I think that OS/2 was ported to Power, but nothing else.
- tengwar2 4y ago
  No, that was v1.0. v1.1 was incompatible with v1.1 in some respects for that reason. I had some stuff that was literally hard-wired with wire-wrap to do bit-shuffling from an image acquisition system (assembly wasn't fast enough) and I would have had to re-wire it to migrate to 1.1. There were also some details that wouldn't have affected most people, like moving from 8 byte entries to 16 byte entries in the descriptor tables. Sorry if I'm vague on the details - it was a while back.
  - chasil 4y ago
    Interesting, the wiki is not clear on this. "OS/2 1.x targets the Intel 80286 processor and DOS fundamentally doesn't. IBM insisted on supporting the 80286 processor, with its 16-bit segmented memory mode, because of commitments made to customers who had purchased many 80286-based PS/2s as a result of IBM's promises surrounding OS/2. Until release 2.0 in April 1992, OS/2 ran in 16-bit protected mode and therefore could not benefit from the Intel 80386's much simpler 32-bit flat memory model and virtual 8086 mode features." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2 The developer of busybox/toybox also had 80286 discussion. https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/os2/OS2Warp.html https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/os2/OS2Warp.html
- markhahn 4y ago
  I remember 386 support connected with 1.3, but probably still using descriptors. NSFT was still involved at 2.0 time, though DOS+Windows was pretty obviously going to win, so to speak, and NT OS/2 was still hush-hush. NT OS/2 ran on ia32, mips, alpha, and i860 (wow, freaky to remember that!) at the time - the "new technology" was as much the racy idea of portable OS code as RISC and microkernels...
  - chasil 4y ago
    Cutler's design was VMS written in (portable) C. (The VMS kernel was written in assembler.) VMS has great strengths, but hard file locks on OS components require downtime for patching. Cutler didn't foresee the avalanche of updates, and the availability collapse of "patch Tuesday." POSIX opportunistic locking was a great gift to his competition.
  - lproven 4y ago
    HPFS386 was a faster, 32-bit version of the HPFS driver, included with 1.3 and later in its server editions. http://www.edm2.com/index.php/HPFS386.IFS http://www.edm2.com/index.php/HPFS386.IFS That's the only 386 code in OS/2 1.x that I know of.
- __d 4y ago
  NT was actually developed on the MIPS Magnum workstations, after being initially targeted at the Intel i860 RISC chips, and only later ported to the i386, PowerPC, and Alpha architectures.
- lproven 4y ago
  This is incorrect on several counts. - It wasn't from version 1.1; the original OS/2 1.0 was a 286 OS, because IBM insisted it ran on the 286, because IBM sold a lot of 286-based PS/2 computers and had promised that they would run OS/2. I have written about this recently, and you commented on the discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33019019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33019019 That post was based on a comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33007995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33007995 - It wasn't "forced down". It was originally a 286 OS, by design. - "Most of the PS/2 line" -- [[citation needed]]. I am not sure about "most" but certainly 286 PS/2 were popular, because they were cheaper. It wasn't about volumes; it was about an IBM promise to PS/2 buyers.
ohjeez 4y ago
If you want an in-depth examination of OS/2's history... https://medium.com/@estherschindler/os-2-is-25-years-old-2012-47d1224ce5d https://medium.com/@estherschindler/os-2-is-25-years-old-201...
pengaru 4y ago
More like Microsoft had a stranglehold on the consumer PC market already with MS-DOS and everything was so broken/incompatible at the time it was practically a foregone conclusion whatever GUI MS shipped in subsequent versions of MS-DOS would own the PC market. OS/2 only made it worse for IBM by shipping DOS+Windows compatibility, so basically zero developers wrote OS/2-native applications. This gave Microsoft nothing but time to get their Windows stability and multitasking performance up to snuff with NT. In hindsight I feel like the dismal PC situation in terms of constant crashes/need for reboots in pre protected-mode MS-DOS and combinatorial explosion of incompatibilities created by all the random ass hardware peripherals conditioned everyone to fear more change and diversity. If the software being shipped on the computers at the time couldn't make things work well, and these were allegedly the experts most qualified to do it right, what will things be like with some alternative software attempting to emulate the same stuff in a "compatible" way? No way, OS/2 was doomed. And I'm saying this as someone who ran OS/2 WARP for years before discovering an Infomagic 4-CD Linux set in my teens.
- bink 4y ago
  Back then the OS that shipped with the PC determined what 99% of people would run (much like today). Microsoft used their burgeoning monopoly to make sure that no one shipped a non-Microsoft OS with any PC. OS/2 was so much better than anything that shipped with any PC I bought at the time, but I remember the cost being prohibitive for a student.
- tzs 4y ago
  > OS/2 only made it worse for IBM by shipping DOS+Windows compatibility, so basically zero developers wrote OS/2-native applications. Practically zero developers wrote for OS/2 because IBM made it hard to do so. I remember something Jerry Pournelle wrote about his experience at a major trade show (COMDEX?) that IBM and Microsoft both attended, after Warp was out and I think when Windows 95 was still in beta. At the IBM booth he told them he'd like to do some OS/2 development and asked how to get started. They gave him a form to fill out to apply for their developer program. They wanted details on what he wanted to develop, his business plan, and stuff like that. If that was all acceptable to IBM then they would let him to buy their expensive SDK. Then he went to the Microsoft booth and said he'd like to develop for Windows 95. They handed him a CD-ROM with the SDK, tools, and documentation. Later, after Windows 95 was released I remember going to a retail software store (Egghead) and in the developer software section there was nothing at all from IBM. Microsoft on the other had everything one needed to start development there. Watcom C/C++ was also there, which supported DOS, Windows, OS/2, Netware, and major DOS extenders, so at least you could get some OS/2 developer tools at retail. And if you did go through all the hoops and develop something for OS/2, IBM didn't seem to care. Apple and Microsoft were always on the lookout for 3rd party programs that could promote their platforms and would run ad campaigns featuring them. They'd pay stores to put such software in better locations. (That same not bothering to market applied to the OS itself. The reason when when you walked into a major software store you would be greeted with a front of store Windows 95 display while OS/2 was on a bottom shelf somewhere in the back of the store most of the lights were burned out and the remaining ones were flickering in a way that made you nauseous is that the stores sell shelf space. Microsoft paid for premium space. IBM did not). They also did a terrible job of hardware support, particular video card support. I wanted to quad boot between Windows 95, Windows NT, OS/2 Warp, and Linux. I had to go through something like half a dozen or more cards video before I found one that worked well enough with OS/2 to support a decent resolution and frame rate. I had expected Linux to be the one to give me the most trouble, but it wasn't too bad. IBM should have had its own team of video driver developers writing drivers for all the common cards that didn't already have good OS/2 support from the card vendors.
readthenotes1 4y ago
And 18 floppy discs to install...
- queuebert 4y ago
  Back then 18 floppies added gravitas. Only big important things would take up this many disks.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    E.g., Soft Landing Systems Linux. Slackware came out on CDs.
    - LocalH 4y ago
      https://github.com/hunar1997/Slackware-1.01 https://github.com/hunar1997/Slackware-1.01 Also: > The Linux veterans among the readers will remember that Slackware 1.0 came on 24 floppy disks, 13 of which were the essential A series, while the remaining 11 floppies contained XFree86 and graphical applications. What exciting features could one find in Slackware 1.0? The Linux kernel was at version 0.99pl11 alpha. It came with math emulation and normal hard drive support, TCP/IP, support for ext2fs, msdos and several other file systems, and it even supported a PS/2 style mouse. It was compiled with libc 4.4.1 and g++ 2.4.5. The graphical part of the distribution was based on XFree86 1.3 and the OpenLook Virtual Window Manager was the default desktop environment. https://lwn.net/Articles/40032/ https://lwn.net/Articles/40032/
throwawayForMe2 4y ago
Back when the company I was working for was trying to decide between OS/2 and Windows NT we took a trip to both Microsoft and IBM to get their pitch. Microsoft had us meet in Redmond, gave us a tour, free books from their bookstore, brought in an Indian chef for lunch (our boss was Indian), gave a big splashy presentation, etc. IBM met us in a dingy conference room in LA, with a whiteboard, don’t even remember any coffee or bagles. The two guys they sent came across like bad car salesmen, and we were a big IBM customer.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Yeah, people assume that Microsoft just somehow "won" by default, but they were young and VERY hungry back then, and it showed.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  I've noticed a pattern where some sales teams treat their existing customers poorly because they assume they are already locked-in.
  - jamiek88 4y ago
    It’s always about incentives. If the sales people earned the same for renewals as they did onboard a new customer you can bet your sweet behind they’d treat you real nice like.
- tb_technical 4y ago
  That's flipping wild to me. I work in the evil defence industry (some sarcasm here). They're so vigilant about bribery that when someone (a general, or someone important) goes to a contractor presentation it's *expected* that there's a little can they put fifty cents or a few bucks into to pay for their share of the bagels. And if this can doesn't exist? Everyone gets very uncomfortable very quickly - literal jobs are at stake. Other industries are just wild, man.
  - behringer 4y ago
    Yep that was my thought. This guy and his company fell for literal bribery.
Aaargh20318 4y ago
There was a time when OS/2 Warp was marketed heavily in my country (the Netherlands) and there was quite a bit if hype around it. If you bought a new PC at the time it came with both OS/2 and Windows 3.11. The main problem with it was that is was basically unusable on consumer hardware at the time. We got a new 80Mhz 486 with 4MB RAM around that time and it was just incredibly slow, while Win3.11 ran just fine. With hardware advancing at an incredible pace back then, it might have had a better chance it they had delayed it by a year.
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
  Wasn't only RAM. SCSI made it fly.
russellbeattie 4y ago
Hey now! You're talking about me! (Not really). My first job out of college was as a temp for a marketing group in Boca Raton, FL where I had moved briefly to get away from New England weather. I was tasked to write "OS/2 Success Stories" which were used to create white papers and other marketing material. This was years before the OS/2 Warp release, which was, I agree, truly abysmally marketed (that logo!!). The only thing I can remember solidly was that Traveller's Insurance used OS/2 and I wrote glowing details of how happy they were with it. But other financial companies come to mind too. Chase maybe? Oh, and that installing OS/2 in the days before CD ROMs required a stack of easily 20 floppy disks or more... You'd pop them in, one after another, listening for a beep to tell you when to switch, for what seemed like hours. Even though it wasn't a technical job per se, I learned to create a little Lotus Notes database to help us keep track of the various companies and more importantly, got my own copies of the rare developer manuals which were only available to licensees of Notes. Between that small bit of knowledge and IBM on my resume (a very big deal even in the early 90s), I was able to bald-face my way into getting a programming job and starting my career.
- lproven 4y ago
  > the OS/2 Warp release, which was, I agree, truly abysmally marketed (that logo!!) There was a reason, but not a good reason. OS/2 used a lot of Star Trek code names. IBM forgot to get permission from the Star Trek IP owners before using "Warp" in marketing: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/11/half-an-operating-system-the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-os2/5/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/11/half-...
protomyth 4y ago
They wanted me to sign an NDA to get the S3 driver to work on my DEC PC. DEC sent me a free copy of NT because they felt bad for me after that conversation. IBM had not shot. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3788346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3788346
euroderf 4y ago
If memory serves, OS/2 came along just as a memory drought hit and the price went thru the roof, and OS/2 had no advantage in a low memory system.

OS/2 was forced down to 80286 compatibility for version 1.1. That was major design damage, required by IBM because most of the PS/2 line was on this CPU. Both Linux and NT required an 80386 with a flat memory model. On capable hardware, this was far superior. Both Linux and NT quickly ran on multiple platforms besides x86. I think that OS/2 was ported to Power, but nothing else.

tengwar2 4y ago
No, that was v1.0. v1.1 was incompatible with v1.1 in some respects for that reason. I had some stuff that was literally hard-wired with wire-wrap to do bit-shuffling from an image acquisition system (assembly wasn't fast enough) and I would have had to re-wire it to migrate to 1.1. There were also some details that wouldn't have affected most people, like moving from 8 byte entries to 16 byte entries in the descriptor tables. Sorry if I'm vague on the details - it was a while back.
- chasil 4y ago
  Interesting, the wiki is not clear on this. "OS/2 1.x targets the Intel 80286 processor and DOS fundamentally doesn't. IBM insisted on supporting the 80286 processor, with its 16-bit segmented memory mode, because of commitments made to customers who had purchased many 80286-based PS/2s as a result of IBM's promises surrounding OS/2. Until release 2.0 in April 1992, OS/2 ran in 16-bit protected mode and therefore could not benefit from the Intel 80386's much simpler 32-bit flat memory model and virtual 8086 mode features." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2 The developer of busybox/toybox also had 80286 discussion. https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/os2/OS2Warp.html https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/os2/OS2Warp.html
markhahn 4y ago
I remember 386 support connected with 1.3, but probably still using descriptors. NSFT was still involved at 2.0 time, though DOS+Windows was pretty obviously going to win, so to speak, and NT OS/2 was still hush-hush. NT OS/2 ran on ia32, mips, alpha, and i860 (wow, freaky to remember that!) at the time - the "new technology" was as much the racy idea of portable OS code as RISC and microkernels...
- chasil 4y ago
  Cutler's design was VMS written in (portable) C. (The VMS kernel was written in assembler.) VMS has great strengths, but hard file locks on OS components require downtime for patching. Cutler didn't foresee the avalanche of updates, and the availability collapse of "patch Tuesday." POSIX opportunistic locking was a great gift to his competition.
- lproven 4y ago
  HPFS386 was a faster, 32-bit version of the HPFS driver, included with 1.3 and later in its server editions. http://www.edm2.com/index.php/HPFS386.IFS http://www.edm2.com/index.php/HPFS386.IFS That's the only 386 code in OS/2 1.x that I know of.
__d 4y ago
NT was actually developed on the MIPS Magnum workstations, after being initially targeted at the Intel i860 RISC chips, and only later ported to the i386, PowerPC, and Alpha architectures.
lproven 4y ago
This is incorrect on several counts. - It wasn't from version 1.1; the original OS/2 1.0 was a 286 OS, because IBM insisted it ran on the 286, because IBM sold a lot of 286-based PS/2 computers and had promised that they would run OS/2. I have written about this recently, and you commented on the discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33019019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33019019 That post was based on a comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33007995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33007995 - It wasn't "forced down". It was originally a 286 OS, by design. - "Most of the PS/2 line" -- [[citation needed]]. I am not sure about "most" but certainly 286 PS/2 were popular, because they were cheaper. It wasn't about volumes; it was about an IBM promise to PS/2 buyers.

ohjeez 4y ago

If you want an in-depth examination of OS/2's history... https://medium.com/@estherschindler/os-2-is-25-years-old-2012-47d1224ce5d https://medium.com/@estherschindler/os-2-is-25-years-old-201...

pengaru 4y ago

More like Microsoft had a stranglehold on the consumer PC market already with MS-DOS and everything was so broken/incompatible at the time it was practically a foregone conclusion whatever GUI MS shipped in subsequent versions of MS-DOS would own the PC market. OS/2 only made it worse for IBM by shipping DOS+Windows compatibility, so basically zero developers wrote OS/2-native applications. This gave Microsoft nothing but time to get their Windows stability and multitasking performance up to snuff with NT. In hindsight I feel like the dismal PC situation in terms of constant crashes/need for reboots in pre protected-mode MS-DOS and combinatorial explosion of incompatibilities created by all the random ass hardware peripherals conditioned everyone to fear more change and diversity. If the software being shipped on the computers at the time couldn't make things work well, and these were allegedly the experts most qualified to do it right, what will things be like with some alternative software attempting to emulate the same stuff in a "compatible" way? No way, OS/2 was doomed. And I'm saying this as someone who ran OS/2 WARP for years before discovering an Infomagic 4-CD Linux set in my teens.

bink 4y ago
Back then the OS that shipped with the PC determined what 99% of people would run (much like today). Microsoft used their burgeoning monopoly to make sure that no one shipped a non-Microsoft OS with any PC. OS/2 was so much better than anything that shipped with any PC I bought at the time, but I remember the cost being prohibitive for a student.
tzs 4y ago
> OS/2 only made it worse for IBM by shipping DOS+Windows compatibility, so basically zero developers wrote OS/2-native applications. Practically zero developers wrote for OS/2 because IBM made it hard to do so. I remember something Jerry Pournelle wrote about his experience at a major trade show (COMDEX?) that IBM and Microsoft both attended, after Warp was out and I think when Windows 95 was still in beta. At the IBM booth he told them he'd like to do some OS/2 development and asked how to get started. They gave him a form to fill out to apply for their developer program. They wanted details on what he wanted to develop, his business plan, and stuff like that. If that was all acceptable to IBM then they would let him to buy their expensive SDK. Then he went to the Microsoft booth and said he'd like to develop for Windows 95. They handed him a CD-ROM with the SDK, tools, and documentation. Later, after Windows 95 was released I remember going to a retail software store (Egghead) and in the developer software section there was nothing at all from IBM. Microsoft on the other had everything one needed to start development there. Watcom C/C++ was also there, which supported DOS, Windows, OS/2, Netware, and major DOS extenders, so at least you could get some OS/2 developer tools at retail. And if you did go through all the hoops and develop something for OS/2, IBM didn't seem to care. Apple and Microsoft were always on the lookout for 3rd party programs that could promote their platforms and would run ad campaigns featuring them. They'd pay stores to put such software in better locations. (That same not bothering to market applied to the OS itself. The reason when when you walked into a major software store you would be greeted with a front of store Windows 95 display while OS/2 was on a bottom shelf somewhere in the back of the store most of the lights were burned out and the remaining ones were flickering in a way that made you nauseous is that the stores sell shelf space. Microsoft paid for premium space. IBM did not). They also did a terrible job of hardware support, particular video card support. I wanted to quad boot between Windows 95, Windows NT, OS/2 Warp, and Linux. I had to go through something like half a dozen or more cards video before I found one that worked well enough with OS/2 to support a decent resolution and frame rate. I had expected Linux to be the one to give me the most trouble, but it wasn't too bad. IBM should have had its own team of video driver developers writing drivers for all the common cards that didn't already have good OS/2 support from the card vendors.

readthenotes1 4y ago

And 18 floppy discs to install...

queuebert 4y ago
Back then 18 floppies added gravitas. Only big important things would take up this many disks.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  E.g., Soft Landing Systems Linux. Slackware came out on CDs.
  - LocalH 4y ago
    https://github.com/hunar1997/Slackware-1.01 https://github.com/hunar1997/Slackware-1.01 Also: > The Linux veterans among the readers will remember that Slackware 1.0 came on 24 floppy disks, 13 of which were the essential A series, while the remaining 11 floppies contained XFree86 and graphical applications. What exciting features could one find in Slackware 1.0? The Linux kernel was at version 0.99pl11 alpha. It came with math emulation and normal hard drive support, TCP/IP, support for ext2fs, msdos and several other file systems, and it even supported a PS/2 style mouse. It was compiled with libc 4.4.1 and g++ 2.4.5. The graphical part of the distribution was based on XFree86 1.3 and the OpenLook Virtual Window Manager was the default desktop environment. https://lwn.net/Articles/40032/ https://lwn.net/Articles/40032/

throwawayForMe2 4y ago

Back when the company I was working for was trying to decide between OS/2 and Windows NT we took a trip to both Microsoft and IBM to get their pitch. Microsoft had us meet in Redmond, gave us a tour, free books from their bookstore, brought in an Indian chef for lunch (our boss was Indian), gave a big splashy presentation, etc. IBM met us in a dingy conference room in LA, with a whiteboard, don’t even remember any coffee or bagles. The two guys they sent came across like bad car salesmen, and we were a big IBM customer.

bombcar 4y ago
Yeah, people assume that Microsoft just somehow "won" by default, but they were young and VERY hungry back then, and it showed.
aidenn0 4y ago
I've noticed a pattern where some sales teams treat their existing customers poorly because they assume they are already locked-in.
- jamiek88 4y ago
  It’s always about incentives. If the sales people earned the same for renewals as they did onboard a new customer you can bet your sweet behind they’d treat you real nice like.
tb_technical 4y ago
That's flipping wild to me. I work in the evil defence industry (some sarcasm here). They're so vigilant about bribery that when someone (a general, or someone important) goes to a contractor presentation it's *expected* that there's a little can they put fifty cents or a few bucks into to pay for their share of the bagels. And if this can doesn't exist? Everyone gets very uncomfortable very quickly - literal jobs are at stake. Other industries are just wild, man.
- behringer 4y ago
  Yep that was my thought. This guy and his company fell for literal bribery.

Aaargh20318 4y ago

There was a time when OS/2 Warp was marketed heavily in my country (the Netherlands) and there was quite a bit if hype around it. If you bought a new PC at the time it came with both OS/2 and Windows 3.11. The main problem with it was that is was basically unusable on consumer hardware at the time. We got a new 80Mhz 486 with 4MB RAM around that time and it was just incredibly slow, while Win3.11 ran just fine. With hardware advancing at an incredible pace back then, it might have had a better chance it they had delayed it by a year.

LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
Wasn't only RAM. SCSI made it fly.

russellbeattie 4y ago

Hey now! You're talking about me! (Not really). My first job out of college was as a temp for a marketing group in Boca Raton, FL where I had moved briefly to get away from New England weather. I was tasked to write "OS/2 Success Stories" which were used to create white papers and other marketing material. This was years before the OS/2 Warp release, which was, I agree, truly abysmally marketed (that logo!!). The only thing I can remember solidly was that Traveller's Insurance used OS/2 and I wrote glowing details of how happy they were with it. But other financial companies come to mind too. Chase maybe? Oh, and that installing OS/2 in the days before CD ROMs required a stack of easily 20 floppy disks or more... You'd pop them in, one after another, listening for a beep to tell you when to switch, for what seemed like hours. Even though it wasn't a technical job per se, I learned to create a little Lotus Notes database to help us keep track of the various companies and more importantly, got my own copies of the rare developer manuals which were only available to licensees of Notes. Between that small bit of knowledge and IBM on my resume (a very big deal even in the early 90s), I was able to bald-face my way into getting a programming job and starting my career.

lproven 4y ago
> the OS/2 Warp release, which was, I agree, truly abysmally marketed (that logo!!) There was a reason, but not a good reason. OS/2 used a lot of Star Trek code names. IBM forgot to get permission from the Star Trek IP owners before using "Warp" in marketing: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/11/half-an-operating-system-the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-os2/5/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/11/half-...

protomyth 4y ago

They wanted me to sign an NDA to get the S3 driver to work on my DEC PC. DEC sent me a free copy of NT because they felt bad for me after that conversation. IBM had not shot. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3788346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3788346

euroderf 4y ago

If memory serves, OS/2 came along just as a memory drought hit and the price went thru the roof, and OS/2 had no advantage in a low memory system.