Re:OS/2 Warp, PowerPC Edition
by WorldMaker on Friday October 20, 2023 @01:14PM
(#37958810)
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.
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.
Re:OS/2 Warp, PowerPC Edition
by frozenport on Saturday October 21, 2023 @03:52PM
(#37969978)
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.
Comparing Windows NT with OS/2, I'd totally agree with you.
Comparing Windows 95 with OS/2, there was way too much 16-bit legacy in Windows. Major parts of Windows 95 were still 16 bit code and protected with a giant lock serializing all access. Windows 95 was a great tactical solution, but not a great OS.
Re:OS/2 Warp, PowerPC Edition
by frozenport on Tuesday October 24, 2023 @01:06AM
(#37995002)
Clearly it was more important that a bug in a user mode GUI app didn't render the system unusable compared to having 16 bit code and a few locks in a mostly serial environment.
The story of OS/2 is a project that dragged on for decades with the benefits only harvested when Windows NT put a GUI and app ecosystem on it.
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.