4 ms·

It could only run win3.x application natively (and faster too). Then they even lost that. By that point win32 apps were starting to become the norm. Then the

It could only run win3.x application natively (and faster too). Then they even lost that. By that point win32 apps were starting to become the norm. Then the icing on the cake was win9x was 70ish dollars. While getting a copy of os2 usually started around 150 and it was wildly picky about the hardware it ran on. I too bought that thing. Suffered thru installing 20 floppy disks and usually a segfault or two during install (making you start over). The PM was kind of cool. But 9x was way better polished. You can tell MS did its homework with usability testing.

lproven 3y ago
100% this. Great summary. Smaller, cheaper, faster, much better UI, vastly better driver and app support. No, the multitasking wasn't as good, but it was pretty good TBH. Compared to Windows 3.x it was amazing. As a loyal OS/2 user who spent £300 odd on boxed copies of OS/2 2.0 and then 2.1, I switched to the unfinished beta version of Windows 95 because it was that much better. A trivial but telling example: On HPFS, OS/2's native filesystem, you got long file names. But DOS didn't. A DOS VM under OS/2 could see HPFS drives (just as if they were network drives) but any file or folder that was not an 8.3 character name was just... invisible. I made a folder called `D:\DOCUMENTS` (note, 9 letters) instead of my old DOS `D:`DOCS` and put a file into it, and I couldn't open it in Word 6 because it could only see names up to 8 letters. No way round. IBM never thought of this. On VFAT in NT 3.5 and Win95 and all later versions, long filenames are automatically truncated and a short name shown to DOS and Win16 API calls. The name was truncated to 6 characters, then a tilde `~`, then a 1 for the first long name with that 6 letters, then ~2 for the second, ~3 for the third. (I never found out what happened if there were >9.) If you installed MS Office 95 it went into Program Files (PROGRA~1) as OFFICE. But if you installed Office 97, they leant in to their new long filenames: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office From dos: C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~1. That's why I sometimes use MICROS~1 as a cynical nickname for Microsoft. It's from their own product on their own OS. Microsoft thought about what would happen if a DOS app accessed a LFN. IBM didn't.
- sumtechguy 3y ago
  MKDIR DOCUMENT.S Wonder if that would show the folder icon or think it is an asm file. Think NT still has a flag where you can get that behavior for older applications if you need it. Think the prog fsutil lets you set it. Never had a need to do it though.
  - lproven 3y ago
    > Wonder if that would show the folder icon or think it is an asm file. Oh, I'm sure it'd work fine, but I wanted "Documents" just because it looked nice. I get LFNs now! Let's use them! [5 min later] Oh. > Think NT still has a flag where you can get that behavior for older applications if you need it. I am _fairly_ sure it's still there and on by default. Before Windows did tab-completion (badly), I used PROGRA~1 and so on as shorter-to-type versions. It was handy. I didn't have to think at all for those examples: they're burned into my muscle memory. C:\PROGRA~1 MICROS~1 DOCUME~1 etc...
    - lproven 3y ago
      > Wonder if that would show the folder icon or think it is an asm file. Oh, I'm sure it'd work fine, but I wanted "Documents" just because it looked nice. « I get LFNs now! Let's use them! [5 min later] Oh. » > Think NT still has a flag where you can get that behavior for older applications if you need it. I am _fairly_ sure it's still there and on by default. Before Windows did tab-completion (badly), I used PROGRA~1 and so on as shorter-to-type versions. It was handy. I didn't have to think at all for those examples: they're burned into my muscle memory. C:\PROGRA~1 MICROS~1 DOCUME~1 etc...

lproven 3y ago

100% this. Great summary. Smaller, cheaper, faster, much better UI, vastly better driver and app support. No, the multitasking wasn't as good, but it was pretty good TBH. Compared to Windows 3.x it was amazing. As a loyal OS/2 user who spent £300 odd on boxed copies of OS/2 2.0 and then 2.1, I switched to the unfinished beta version of Windows 95 because it was that much better. A trivial but telling example: On HPFS, OS/2's native filesystem, you got long file names. But DOS didn't. A DOS VM under OS/2 could see HPFS drives (just as if they were network drives) but any file or folder that was not an 8.3 character name was just... invisible. I made a folder called `D:\DOCUMENTS` (note, 9 letters) instead of my old DOS `D:`DOCS` and put a file into it, and I couldn't open it in Word 6 because it could only see names up to 8 letters. No way round. IBM never thought of this. On VFAT in NT 3.5 and Win95 and all later versions, long filenames are automatically truncated and a short name shown to DOS and Win16 API calls. The name was truncated to 6 characters, then a tilde `~`, then a 1 for the first long name with that 6 letters, then ~2 for the second, ~3 for the third. (I never found out what happened if there were >9.) If you installed MS Office 95 it went into Program Files (PROGRA~1) as OFFICE. But if you installed Office 97, they leant in to their new long filenames: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office From dos: C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~1. That's why I sometimes use MICROS~1 as a cynical nickname for Microsoft. It's from their own product on their own OS. Microsoft thought about what would happen if a DOS app accessed a LFN. IBM didn't.

sumtechguy 3y ago
MKDIR DOCUMENT.S Wonder if that would show the folder icon or think it is an asm file. Think NT still has a flag where you can get that behavior for older applications if you need it. Think the prog fsutil lets you set it. Never had a need to do it though.
- lproven 3y ago
  > Wonder if that would show the folder icon or think it is an asm file. Oh, I'm sure it'd work fine, but I wanted "Documents" just because it looked nice. I get LFNs now! Let's use them! [5 min later] Oh. > Think NT still has a flag where you can get that behavior for older applications if you need it. I am _fairly_ sure it's still there and on by default. Before Windows did tab-completion (badly), I used PROGRA~1 and so on as shorter-to-type versions. It was handy. I didn't have to think at all for those examples: they're burned into my muscle memory. C:\PROGRA~1 MICROS~1 DOCUME~1 etc...
  - lproven 3y ago
    > Wonder if that would show the folder icon or think it is an asm file. Oh, I'm sure it'd work fine, but I wanted "Documents" just because it looked nice. « I get LFNs now! Let's use them! [5 min later] Oh. » > Think NT still has a flag where you can get that behavior for older applications if you need it. I am _fairly_ sure it's still there and on by default. Before Windows did tab-completion (badly), I used PROGRA~1 and so on as shorter-to-type versions. It was handy. I didn't have to think at all for those examples: they're burned into my muscle memory. C:\PROGRA~1 MICROS~1 DOCUME~1 etc...