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IBM OS/2 2.0 turns 30 this month

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First post, by davidrg

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Turns out IBM OS/2 2.0 turns 30 this month - kind of. There was a Limited Availability release of it in October 1991 but I think that was more a beta level version released to certain customers due to contract obligations. The proper public release was April 1992, six months before Windows 3.1 came out.

ins-28.png
Last year I tried out OS/2 2.0 for the first time and was kind of blown away that it was not only older than Windows 3.1 but so much further ahead than it. Its almost a preview of features that would come in Windows 95 - files on the desktop, folder windows instead of a file manager app, browsing the network the same way (that Network icon on the desktop is pretty much Network Neighborhood from Windows 95) and I'm sure loads of other things.

Over all quite a big jump from the previous version, OS/2 1.3 which came out in December 1990 and looks pretty similar to Windows 3.x:
ins-01.png

Anyone here use OS/2 2.0 when it came out? Was it good enough to replace DOS and Windows 3.0?

Reply 1 of 1, by Grzyb

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I remember it when OS/2 2.0 was released - I've read an article in some magazine, definitely positive, maybe even enthusiastic.
But I wasn't able to try it out myself, due to its system requirements.

386 (preferably 486), 8 MB RAM, plenty of HDD...
it was all frightening, considering that vast majority of PCs in use back then was still "AT/40/mono", ie. 286, 40 MB HDD, Hercules graphics.

Sure, OS/2 2.0 was a great product.
It was the first 32-bit system designed especially for PC, with the only competition being some PC ports of Unix, and Unix was more suitable for dedicated RISC platforms.
It featured preemptive multitasking, HPFS, and other features missing in Windows 3.x, and some of them missing even in Windows 9x/ME.

But the price of a suitable machine was prohibitive!

AT/40/mono - even with its standard 1 MB of RAM - was enough to run Windows 3.0 or 3.1.
Useless, but it was running.
386 with 4 MB of RAM was already a good machine for Windows, but the OS/2 still wouldn't even budge!

And the major reason for all that elephantiasis was Workplace Shell...
"files on the desktop, folder windows instead of a file manager app, browsing the network the same way..."
"Over all quite a big jump from the previous version..."

I would have been very happy with the previous GUI - or even no GUI at all! - but with some reasonable hardware requirements.

Nie tylko, jak widzicie, w tym trudność, że nie zdołacie wejść no moja górę, lecz i w tym, ze ja do was cały zejść nie mogę, gdyż schodząc, gubię po drodze to, co miałem donieść.

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