[cloudsec9]

I'd disagree that OS/2 was "worthless garbage", as MS would keep using it for several generations for their server/LAN OS.

I'd argue that OS/2 2.x was pretty much a ground-up re-write, as OS/2 1.x had been written for 16-bit 286 protected mode and not the 32-bit 386 protected mode which the next version targeted. IBM did insist that the new version run all of the 1.x 16 bit stuff, but like DOS and Win 3.x mode this was done through some virtualization if memory serves.

The big hurdle OS/2 faced was being memory hungry at a time when memory prices were still high and when the installed base had less then half of the required amount by default.

[caspper69]

It wasn't just memory requirements that hurt OS/2. I'd argue one of the biggest hurdles was IBM couldn't stop being IBM for even one second to do any reflection on the realities in the PC market. They still thought they were going to have a renaissance with 386 PS/2 systems for goodness sakes.

And man were they expensive. $195 for OS/2 2.0. That's about $434 in 2024 dollars, and the PS/2 systems that ran it best started north of $2k if memory serves. No one outside of corporate and the biggest enthusiasts were shelling out that kind of money for "a better DOS than DOS" (cough Desqview cough) or "a better Windows (3.1) than Windows (3.1)" (irrelevant and not that impressiive imho).

Love them or hate them, Microsoft has always been good at hitting the 75th percentile, aka "good enough" and "cheap enough". They proved (conclusively) that customers will put up with a mountain of shit if you cost half of what your competitors do. Plus they knew how to make ISVs a lot of money too. IBM just couldn't get it's head out of it's ass, I mean the 1960s.

And for the record, I salivated over OS/2. I scored a beta of 2.0 when I was 14 off of a BBS associate. I had an IBM laser printer, IBM typewriters, an original IBM PC. I thought back then that IBM meant quality (and to be fair, it did).

But they didn't get it and Microsoft did. Windows 95 had pizzaz and hype, the CD had Weezer's Buddy Holly video (video!). They were working to get games running right under 95. They were courting all of the biggest application vendors. They were doing shit. IBM? Too busy being IBM.

[lproven]

> They still thought they were going to have a renaissance with 386 PS/2 systems for goodness sakes.

Yeah but...

If OS/2 1.x had been a 386 OS and delivered on the promise: great DOS compatibility, multitasking including of DOS apps, and built-in networking, with a passable GUI based on Windows 2...

I think it could have been a hit.

I was there, supporting this stuff in production back then.

DOS was a PITA and getting networking working on DOS and still having enough of that all-important first 640kB of RAM left to run anything was hard. I was a master of it. My skills at it landed me several jobs.

NT made all that disappear. RAM was just RAM, each DOS session got all of a virtual instance's RAM dedicated just to it -- and a network drive looked like a local drive. It was like black magic. It was amazing.

Big drives, with a solid filesystem. Long file names. TCP/IP in the box, as standard.

NT 3.1 was amazing stuff, but that was in 1993 and you needed a £5000 PC with 32MB to run it.

OS/2 2.0 delivered this, smaller and faster, in a quarter of the RAM, the year before...

It was amazing. It was a phase shift in the industry. But the networking was extra, TCP/IP was extra, etc. etc.

And it was late. I just wrote about the beta of MICROSOFT OS/2 2.0:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/11/trying_ms_prerelease_...

This stuff was ready in 1990.

But if IBM hadn't screwed the project in 1985 or so, OS/2 1.0 could have done that in 1987 or so.

Before Linux (1991), before Windows 3 (1990), before 386BSD (1989).

It could have been the amazing thing that the hype promised. The tech was there and it worked. It could have been got ready in the 1980s.

A PC industry controlled by IBM would be no better than one controlled by Microsoft and it would have been more expensive.

But we all suffered years more of the crap of DOS and DOS memory management and Windows 3.x, because IBM fscked up.

I don't know what would have happened.

Maybe it would have forced the Unix folks to adopt Arm 20 or 30 years earlier and make RISC boxes that were cheaper and cooler-running than x86? Maybe those expensive IBM OS/2 x86 machines would have forced BSD onto Arm and what happened 25Y later with Apple kit happened a generation before with Acorn kit.

I am 100% not saying it would have been a better world... but it would have been a much more different one than the closed narrow imaginations today portray.

[CRConrad]

> IBM did insist that the new version run all of the 1.x 16 bit stuff, but like DOS and Win 3.x mode this was done through some virtualization if memory serves.

Kind of, but IIRC it was a fundamentally different and more low-level kind of "virtualization": The 80386 processor's virtual[1] 8086 processor mode. Not much for them to do in the OS code itself, compared to writing a whole VM to run DOS apps on (he confidently says, never having written anything of the kind himself).

[1]: Probably not exactly the right word, but I can't recall the correct term right now.

[sydbarrett74]

To be fair, OS/2 could be run on less-beefy hardware that would've choked on NT 3.1.