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I don't really doubt that that's true for business or marketing decisions, but what exactly were the technical reasons? I don't know too much about OS/2 interna

by anyfoo 2y ago

I don't really doubt that that's true for business or marketing decisions, but what exactly were the technical reasons? I don't know too much about OS/2 internals, but what made it worse than, say, NT?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
fredoralive 2y ago
It didn't really cause issues for end users, but OS/2 was tied to x86, it actually uses more than two rings and AIUI even Warp 4 still has 16 bit code in various places. One of the reasons for creating NT back when it was "NT OS/2" was as a "Portable OS/2" so that the OS didn't get left behind when one of the upcoming RISC architectures inevitably destroyed x86 (nobody then would expect a clunky CISC like x86 to be on top 30+ years later, or that the nearest challenging RISC would be the chip from the Acorn Archimedes).
- anyfoo 2y ago
  Hah. It is pretty crazy that the Acorn Archimedes chip won.
giamma 2y ago
At the time of OS/2 vs NT, NT needed a huge amount of ram to work, while OS/2, even though more greedy than Windows 3 or Windows 9.5 was still cheaper. The system was very good, stable, snappy. The main issue was the lack of software. Microsoft made deals with all hardware vendors and whenever people bought a personal computer they would find Windows pre-installed. At that time most of the people did not know what an operating system was, they just thought of a PC as an appliance, and most believed that Windows was the only option, that PC=Windows. Plus, computer and software were quite expensive, so why buy another operating system when your new PC comes with Windows for free. There are articles over the internet that claim that Microsoft, to kill OS/2, made deals with PC makers (HP, Compaq etc.) giving them OEM Windows licenses for free as long as they did not offer OS/2 as an alternative purchase choice to the end users, which basically meant 99% of people did not even know OS/2 existed. You would then find OS/2 in airports, banks, public transport etc. (all big organizations who were IBM customers) but it was not known by regular users. This said the main weakness of OS/2 was the SIQ [1], single-input-queue. The user interface had a single queue for dispatching UI events, and due to a poor design, a single badly written UI program that got stuck while processing a call from the event loop, would freeze the whole OS/2 user interface. This was improved in later releases but never completely solved, even though admittedly in the last years of OS/2 this type of issues became quite rare. [1] https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Databook_for_OS/2_%E2%80%93_Chapter_2_%E2%80%93_Inside_OS/2_Warp#The_Single_Input_Queue_Dilemma https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Databook_for_OS/2_%E...
- spwa4 2y ago
  Perhaps this is true, but don't you think the dangerous competition for Windows was really more other DOS graphical interfaces? Things like GEM, DESQview, PC/GEOS (GeoWorks), DeskMake. Especially GeoWorks ... makes you wonder why Microsoft won. If you ever tried installing and using OS/2 on a normal (for the time) PC, you don't wonder why it lost.
  - giamma 2y ago
    Well in Italy where I leave I have never seen a PC running any of those dos graphical interfaces. Maybe they were not even sold in Italy?

by anyfoo 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

fredoralive 2y ago

It didn't really cause issues for end users, but OS/2 was tied to x86, it actually uses more than two rings and AIUI even Warp 4 still has 16 bit code in various places. One of the reasons for creating NT back when it was "NT OS/2" was as a "Portable OS/2" so that the OS didn't get left behind when one of the upcoming RISC architectures inevitably destroyed x86 (nobody then would expect a clunky CISC like x86 to be on top 30+ years later, or that the nearest challenging RISC would be the chip from the Acorn Archimedes).

anyfoo 2y ago
Hah. It is pretty crazy that the Acorn Archimedes chip won.

giamma 2y ago

At the time of OS/2 vs NT, NT needed a huge amount of ram to work, while OS/2, even though more greedy than Windows 3 or Windows 9.5 was still cheaper. The system was very good, stable, snappy. The main issue was the lack of software. Microsoft made deals with all hardware vendors and whenever people bought a personal computer they would find Windows pre-installed. At that time most of the people did not know what an operating system was, they just thought of a PC as an appliance, and most believed that Windows was the only option, that PC=Windows. Plus, computer and software were quite expensive, so why buy another operating system when your new PC comes with Windows for free. There are articles over the internet that claim that Microsoft, to kill OS/2, made deals with PC makers (HP, Compaq etc.) giving them OEM Windows licenses for free as long as they did not offer OS/2 as an alternative purchase choice to the end users, which basically meant 99% of people did not even know OS/2 existed. You would then find OS/2 in airports, banks, public transport etc. (all big organizations who were IBM customers) but it was not known by regular users. This said the main weakness of OS/2 was the SIQ [1], single-input-queue. The user interface had a single queue for dispatching UI events, and due to a poor design, a single badly written UI program that got stuck while processing a call from the event loop, would freeze the whole OS/2 user interface. This was improved in later releases but never completely solved, even though admittedly in the last years of OS/2 this type of issues became quite rare. [1] https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Databook_for_OS/2_%E2%80%93_Chapter_2_%E2%80%93_Inside_OS/2_Warp#The_Single_Input_Queue_Dilemma https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Databook_for_OS/2_%E...

spwa4 2y ago
Perhaps this is true, but don't you think the dangerous competition for Windows was really more other DOS graphical interfaces? Things like GEM, DESQview, PC/GEOS (GeoWorks), DeskMake. Especially GeoWorks ... makes you wonder why Microsoft won. If you ever tried installing and using OS/2 on a normal (for the time) PC, you don't wonder why it lost.
- giamma 2y ago
  Well in Italy where I leave I have never seen a PC running any of those dos graphical interfaces. Maybe they were not even sold in Italy?