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My 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

My 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 ago
oh god that denim jacket goes so hard. It's something you'd see at like a LGR old computer con
codetrotter 3y ago
Maybe 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 ago
  Sadly 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 ago
    When 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 ago
  I run it on a ThinkPad X61 and it is very fun
lobochrome 3y ago
He 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 ago
I 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 ago
    Yeah, 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 ago
      This 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 ago
    Nope. 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 ago
Around 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 ago
  REXX was awesome. Completely blew away cmd.com batch scripts. I used it in DOS constantly. Shame it died with OS/2.
  - grahamlee 3y ago
    I 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 ago
  https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/ https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/
  - tssva 3y ago
    I've searched Hobbes and other repositories. It isn't there. There is another VX-REXX based ftp program there.
    - squarefoot 3y ago
      ObjectREXX 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 ago
That'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 ago
I 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.

ailurooo 3y ago

oh god that denim jacket goes so hard. It's something you'd see at like a LGR old computer con

codetrotter 3y ago

Maybe 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 ago
Sadly 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 ago
  When 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 ago
I run it on a ThinkPad X61 and it is very fun

lobochrome 3y ago

He 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 ago

I 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 ago
  Yeah, 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 ago
    This 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 ago
  Nope. 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 ago

Around 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 ago
REXX was awesome. Completely blew away cmd.com batch scripts. I used it in DOS constantly. Shame it died with OS/2.
- grahamlee 3y ago
  I 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 ago
https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/ https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/
- tssva 3y ago
  I've searched Hobbes and other repositories. It isn't there. There is another VX-REXX based ftp program there.
  - squarefoot 3y ago
    ObjectREXX 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 ago

That'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 ago

I 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.