8 ms·
OS/2 Warp, PowerPC Edition
- wiredfool 3y agoGod help us, OS2/Warp.
- kristopolous 3y agoOS/2 was a pretty nice system. Too bad it never caught on Howard Stern liked it https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1PErQUubZCs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1PErQUubZCs
- geek_at 3y agoMy dad worked for IBM for 30 years and he was called "Mr OS/2" because he was pretty good at selling it. I have so many memories of OS/2 events when he took me. Still have some OS/2 Merch - Team OS/2 Denim Jacket https://pictshare.net/wxj2nz.png https://pictshare.net/wxj2nz.png - Back https://pictshare.net/rxny3i.png https://pictshare.net/rxny3i.png - OS/2 Sweater https://pictshare.net/vhtgcj.png https://pictshare.net/vhtgcj.png - OS/2 Ambassador coins in Epoxy https://pictshare.net/nelpoj.png https://pictshare.net/nelpoj.png Now he's retired but still tells me at least once a month when he has a computer problem about "How easy that would have been to fix in OS/2 and REXX" :)
- ailurooo 3y agooh god that denim jacket goes so hard. It's something you'd see at like a LGR old computer con
- codetrotter 3y agoMaybe he would appreciate a computer with this updated version of OS/2 https://hackaday.com/2023/02/16/arcaos-os-2-updated-for-the-modern-world/ https://hackaday.com/2023/02/16/arcaos-os-2-updated-for-the-...
- hexagonwin 3y agoSadly ArcaOS isn't so usable nowadays. The biggest issue is that an ancient version of Firefox is the only viable option for a web browser.
- Koshkin 3y agoWhen usability == browsing Amazon...
- anthonyhn 3y ago>The biggest issue is that an ancient version of Firefox is the only viable option for a web browser. There was some work done on porting Palemoon, Otter Browser, and QtWebEngine to ArcaOS. A preview version of a QtWebEngine-based browser[0] was available for download and may work with newer websites (given QtWebEngine is based on Chromium), but I have not tested it myself. [0] https://www.os2world.com/cms/index.php/past-news/80-news/software/23292-dooble-browser-preview-version-rpm https://www.os2world.com/cms/index.php/past-news/80-news/sof...
- Lammy 3y agoI run it on a ThinkPad X61 and it is very fun
- lobochrome 3y agoHe my dad did the same. We also have a basement full of Warp memorabilia. I only remember how shitty it felt to be the OS/2 kid when all the others were on Windows 95 (not that I didn’t defend OS/2 as the superior system).
- sgt 3y agoI remember back in the 90s, I was a little kid at the time, maybe 12 years old, and I was so proud that I had Windows 95. An acquaintance of the family then commented that Windows 95 was absolute shit. He had OS/2 Warp and it was superior in every way, especially for power users. Honestly it made me feel quite envious, but he wouldn't explain how I would get hold of OS/2 Warp so I just let it be.
- mschaef 3y ago> He had OS/2 Warp and it was superior in every way, especially for power users. The technology of OS/2 Warp was a better than Win9x, but once you started caring about having native 32-bit software it didn't really matter. Windows ran away with that market in short order, leaving too few options over on OS/2 for most users. In a sense, that was always the OS/2 story... it never did a quite good enough job of both running users' existing software and attracting a big enough space of OS/2 specific software to be differentiated as an OS platform.
- WorldMaker 3y agoYeah, OS/2 Warp was sometimes the best way to run DOS and Windows 3.1 software, but as soon as you had some good or fun Windows 95 software there was never any reason to go back to OS/2 Warp because you probably didn't own any OS/2 specific software.
- twoodfin 3y agoThis is all completely correct, but ca. 1995 I managed to pick up what I think was called Lotus “SmartSuite” for OS/2. It included Ami Pro, which I expect I’ll go to my grave believing was the best word processor I ever used. The layout controls in particular were amazing.
- frozenport 3y agoNope. It kept crashing because the GUI message pump was essentially shared. This is just the tip of the iceberge, there were a lot of bad technical decisions that made it unstable.
- WillAdams 3y agoAround that timeframe, I was selling computers out of a tiny shop --- one of the salespeople convinced a customer to buy a computer w/ OS/2 which we installed (my only experience w/ it) and then delivered to the customer and set up. Naturally, they then went to Wal-Mart to buy a printer since it was cheaper there, but the customer called us to ask how to install it --- I was able to do this over the phone by just asking the customer what they saw on the screen and walking them through it (remember kids, this was before Plug-and-Play). If I could get a copy of OS/2 for Pens, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
- tssva 3y ago"How easy that would have been to fix in OS/2 and REXX" I loved REXX when I used OS/2. Besides using it for scripting, I wrote a few programs using Watcon VX-REXX which was similar to Visual Basic but used REXX. I was most proud of the graphical ftp program I created. I uploaded it to the OS/2 BBS but can't find it in any of the archives of the site. In the mid-2000s I used REXX one final time to program an IVR system. I was not and had never been a developer by profession but I was the only one with any familiarity with REXX, so it fell to me.
- jandrese 3y agoREXX was awesome. Completely blew away cmd.com batch scripts. I used it in DOS constantly. Shame it died with OS/2.
- grahamlee 3y agoI last used REXX last year, to write BDD tests for my Amiga software on AmigaOS 3.2. IBM still support it on MVS and z/OS, too.
- alrs 3y agohttps://hobbes.nmsu.edu/ https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/
- tssva 3y agoI've searched Hobbes and other repositories. It isn't there. There is another VX-REXX based ftp program there.
- squarefoot 3y agoObjectREXX is there. https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/dev/proglang/orexx/ObjectREXX_6-0_1999-05-18.zip https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/dev/proglang/orexx/...
- 3y ago
- michaelcampbell 3y agoThat's wonderful. I used OS/2 for a bit as a young man and loved it. As a professional developer-in-the-making, I learned REXX as well (although in college we were using it on IBM big-iron at the time too). I can't remember what class it was, but I was daydreaming and wrote an arbitrary (integer) root finding algorithm in REXX one day. eg: show me the 6th root of 872378294, using a variation of finding a square root iteratively.
- sixothree 3y agoI have an OS/2 poster somewhere. It is a picture of a tree with three different fruit on it. Each representing the three worlds it lived in - OS/2, Windows, and DOS.
- ninjamayo 3y agoGeez, OS2/Warp. Memories! Trying to install it on my 486DX
- tudorw 3y agoso, so, so many discs...
- madengr 3y ago[dead]
- Findecanor 3y agoI remember OS/2 Warp on a single CD that came as a cover disc for a magazine. Installation instructions: First copy to 18 floppy disks ...
- mhd 3y agoI got OS/2 2.x when IBM sold it very cheaply one time (about 60 Deutschmarks, I think). But it came on soo many floppies and had such requirements that I never got around to install it. I used the floppies years after for warez, though… Took OS/2 Warp on a CD for me to finally give it a try. If it would've been more stable on my system, it might have postponed my journey to Linux for a few years…
- sumtechguy 3y agoThen randomly fail on like disk 10. Turn off the 'turbo' on your computer and try again (taking twice as long this time).
- pavlov 3y agoOS/2 Warp for PowerPC is a distant cousin of today's macOS because it also uses the Mach microkernel. This was not the case for OS/2 for x86 which was a regular monolithic kernel. It's mentioned in the article that IBM's original goal was to have a single desktop OS with multiple personalities: "Going deeper into the kernel, OS/2 PPC had precious little in common with the Intel version. The product was based on the IBM microkernel, which was a refinement of the Carnegie Mellon University MACH microkernel. The microkernel bore no resemblance to the Intel OS/2 kernel whatsoever and it was also very different from other operating systems. "The initial grandiose plan was to build the Workplace OS, the One Ring to Bind Them All of operating systems. Workplace OS (or WPOS for short) was supposed to be built on top of the MACH microkernel and support multiple "personalities". The personalities would implement existing operating systems such as OS/2, AIX, Windows NT and perhaps even MacOS. In the end this never happened and the only supported personality was OS/2. The initial design is still tangible in OS/2 PPC. The OS/2 personality is implemented in the "OS/2 Server" and there are certain "personality neutral" services. Most device drivers were personality neutral and worked directly with the microkernel. This included disk and network drivers. A notable exception were display drivers, where OS/2 PPC introduced the GRADD model, later ported to Intel OS/2."
- ch_123 3y agoThe XNU kernel in macOS is based on the Mach 2.5 kernel, which is not a microkernel, but rather a BSD-derived monolithic kernel with the Mach IPC mechanisms baked in. The OSF/1 operating system for the DEC Alpha (later known as Tru64) also used Mach 2.5 AFAIK, the Mach microkernel was version 3.0 onwards, and used in projects such as IBM Workplace OS, MKLinux, and GNU HURD. These operating systems rarely progressed past the experimental or research project phase.
- johndoe0815 3y agoXnu is based on Mach 3, only the older NeXT/OpenStep kernels were based on a mix of Mach 2.0 and 2.5. MacOS uses a BSD personality colocated in the same address space as the Mach part, so it is no pure microkernel system. You can check the last (OpenStep-based) Rhapsody kernel sources from Darwin 0.3 at https://github.com/evolver56k/Darwin-0.3/tree/master/kernel-7/mach https://github.com/evolver56k/Darwin-0.3/tree/master/kernel-... and the first archived version of the MacOS X xnu kernel at https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/tree/xnu-123.5/osfmk https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/tree/xnu-123.5/osfmk
- qwerty456127 3y agoI bloody want my Linux and apps on it could look like this or something of this flavour. Most retro themes are poor quality shams (Chicago95[1] is the only good one, yet still not perfect). I feel like I would gladly pay serious money for a really high quality conversion of all the parts, including themes for all widget libraries and no quirks. [1]https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95
- _chu1 3y agoCheck out Trinity Desktop https://www.trinitydesktop.org/ https://www.trinitydesktop.org/
- postmodest 3y agoThe hard part is the icons. Nobody does aliased bitmapped icons anymore. We should've made SVG icons the default, like the vector icons in IRIX. Then we could just tweak the renderer.
- _chu1 3y agoI'm pretty sure TDE uses SVGs
- kristopolous 3y agoCDE is still a thing and it's free.
- jwells89 3y agoReally, for a full fidelity reproduction of old OSes one needs a dedicated DE rather than a theme. Such DEs are on my list of things I want to work on should I find myself with an excess of spare time. I think 1:1 old OS repro DEs would be surprisingly popular, and would eventually be among the most stable and efficient options available since they’d have a strictly bounded well defined feature set (meaning dev efforts would shift to exclusive bug hunting and performance improvements once feature completeness had been achieved).
- 3y ago
- xvilka 3y agoThere's also Arca Noae take on it - ArcaOS[1]. [1] https://www.arcanoae.com/ https://www.arcanoae.com/
- pcardoso 3y agoI loved OS/2 so much. Used it a lot in my home PC and it was better at running Windows and DOS apps than Windows. Loved the theme of Merlin (v4.0) with its WarpSans font, the window decorations and coloured tabs! Looked so futuristic. The memories of seeing DOS Doom in a OS/2 Window. Looked so crisp on a window, in all its 320x200 glory.
- madengr 3y agoNot only that, but being able to play Doom (or maybe it was Wolfenstein) while downloading at 14.4k was amazing. I believe I used PMComm and of course a 16550 serial card. I used it extensively in college in early 90’s, as Windows 3.1 seemed so primitive, but then a couple of years later Linux kind of took everything by storm.
- postmodest 3y agoBut DOS windows only updated at (IIRC) 10Hz, so while you could run four or five DOOMs, a single DOOM in a window would still be unplayable slow.
- pcardoso 3y agoI think it was worked well enough, but after your comment I’m not so sure now. Could it be a os/2 port? Well, I still loved it.
- quitit 3y agoI distinctly remember a mud-slinging campaign aimed at OS/2 Warp because it had "one-button internet access", and this was deemed as deeply unsafe by various PR machines. I remember hearing that for weeks on local radio.
- tiahura 3y agoThe heady days of the PowerPC, what could have been. Who else was waiting for the 615 and OS2 to replace Wintel?
- speed_spread 3y agoOS/2, maybe not, but I sure longed for one of those upcoming PReP machines! (PowerPC Reference Platform)
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 3y agoInteresting comments from a former IBM employee involved in the development of the PowerPC version of OS/2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20888274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20888274
- spandextwins 3y agoI remember seeing the roller coaster demo on a powerpc prep machine connected to a token ring network. Now those were the days!
- tombert 3y agoI think it's fun to ponder the "what if?" universes if other operating systems had caught on. I'm not going to claim which is "better", but OS/2 was different enough from Windows to where I do think the world would be a different place if it had managed to win the OS wars of the 90s instead of Windows. I suppose the same question can be asked about BeOS and NextStep (though the latter more or less did get the success to know what the future would be like).
- faeriechangling 3y agoI'll claim that it was better. The trouble was that it was made by IBM who engaged in countless acts of bureaucratic incompetence and corporate self-sabotage. From the product arriving too late, to IBM not caring about how much it cost its customers, to IBMs hubristic attitude towards third parties, to hilariously incompetent marketing.
- tombert 3y agoI've only played with OS/2 in emulators/VMs, and not really enough to form concrete opinions. What do you think made it better?
- quercusa 3y ago> OS/2 PPC included a full fledged PC emulator, which supplied a virtual x86 CPU as well as common PC hardware Was x86 emulation built into PowerPC or would this have been all software?
- MrDrMcCoy 3y agoI don't think POWER ever had a full set of x86 instructions, but I vaguely recall that some chips had a few extra instructions that made emulation easier. The rest would have to be done in software with something like this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVM_Lx86 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVM_Lx86
- sillywalk 3y agoThere's also Solaris for PowerPC. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23341721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23341721 https://virtuallyfun.com/2020/05/28/powerpc-solaris-on-the-rs-6000/ https://virtuallyfun.com/2020/05/28/powerpc-solaris-on-the-r...