Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
Ah, O/S2. Gosh, I have fond memories of that. Not forever, and all that, but OMG, was I wowzered by it the first time I saw it.
Hitch
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Actual original OS/2? Sometime before 1989. It didn't originally have the Presentation manager, which is why MS only sold it as a Server OS. (similar to Windows 2.x & 3.x Program Manager. Like BSD, Xenix and UNIX with no X-Windows, it was text only. NT 3.1 and maybe up to NT 5.1 (XP) could run OS/2 console AKA textmode programs natively, but not Graphical Desktop ones.
Most people think of OS/2 Warp, released in 1994, though 1992 OS/2 2.0 (32 bit) had a desktop (Presentation Manager) and ran DOS by bundling DOS 5 (which unlike NT could freeze the system) and ran ordinary 16 bit MS Windows applications using bundled Win 3.1 code on a VDM.
By 1995 it was superior to Win95 (really still very like WFWG 3.11 with Win32s and Explorer and a mix of 16 & 32 bit) but seriously inferior to NT3.5 (1994), NT3.51(1995) and NT4.0 (1996) versions of Windows,
Warp was the last attempt at the consumer marketplace and failed due lack of drivers and game compatibility. The inferior to NT pseudo OS Win95/Win98 survived till Vista or later because of games.