Live data from Hacker News

Hobbes OS/2 Archive is shutting down

arstechnica.com

1–10 of 38 posts

Re: Hobbes OS/2 Archive is shutting down

#3
Interestingly, a sub-licensed version of OS/2 is still sold and actively upgraded (called ArcaOS). It's in a bizarre state where their license from IBM doesn't give them enough leeway to port it to 64-bit, but they have been able to add modern things like USB 3 drivers.

Re: Hobbes OS/2 Archive is shutting down

#5
post #2

Did they co-ordinate with archive.org to take over this treasure of human history?

TFA says

>Archivists such as Jason Scott of the Internet Archive have stepped up to say that the files hosted on Hobbes are safe and already mirrored elsewhere. "Nobody should worry about Hobbes, I've got Hobbes handled," wrote Scott on Mastodon in early January. OS/2 World.com also published a statement about making a mirror.

Re: Hobbes OS/2 Archive is shutting down

#6
post #4

I was too young to experience OS/2. Looking at the screenshots, I am amazed at how much Windows 3/3.1/3.11 ripped off OS/2.

It wasn't ripped off, just reused. The OS/2 1.x PM was co-developed by Microsoft, and I think they had more of a say in it, since the IBM OS/2 2.x PM had a different look.

Re: Hobbes OS/2 Archive is shutting down

#7
post #4

I was too young to experience OS/2. Looking at the screenshots, I am amazed at how much Windows 3/3.1/3.11 ripped off OS/2.

I believe it was the other way round, e.g. OS 2 v1.1 was the first version to have a GUI and was released in 1988 six months after Windows 2.0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2

Re: Hobbes OS/2 Archive is shutting down

#8
post #4

I was too young to experience OS/2. Looking at the screenshots, I am amazed at how much Windows 3/3.1/3.11 ripped off OS/2.

Microsoft and IBM were very close in those days. In fact, Microsoft wrote (some? most? all?) of the first version of OS/2 under contract for IBM. It was in fact a disagreement between IBM and Microsoft over Windows 3.x that ultimately severed that partnership supposedly. It’s been many years since I read this, but if memory serves it was Ballmer’s handling of IBM that led to the term BOGUS having a special meaning at Microsoft in the late 80s / early 90s. Wish I could remember which book that was in because I’m finding it difficult to discover a reference today searching.

Edit:

It’s not the original reference I’m remembering as this was published in 2022, but did find a mention of the term in this book: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Thank_You_Ibm_Next_Edit...

Re: Hobbes OS/2 Archive is shutting down

#9
post #4

I was too young to experience OS/2. Looking at the screenshots, I am amazed at how much Windows 3/3.1/3.11 ripped off OS/2.

I believe it was the other way round, e.g. OS 2 v1.1 was the first version to have a GUI and was released in 1988 six months after Windows 2.0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2

> The promised user interface, Presentation Manager, was introduced with OS/2 1.1 in October 1988.[15] It had a similar user interface to Windows 2.1, which was released in May of that year. (The interface was replaced in versions 1.2 and 1.3 by a look closer in appearance to Windows 3.0.)

To quote the relevant section of parent’s link.

Post reply on HN