Half an operating system: The triumph and tragedy of OS/2

Post by tokenrove » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 1:18 PM UTC

wglb wrote: post #52

smacktoward wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who'd grown up on mainframes. The systems you're used to are fabulously expensive, sure, but their operating systems have sophisticated architectures that allow them to easily juggle multiple users running multiple programs while maintaining the security of the system overall. They are the completest expression ever realized of forty…

Regarding vulnerabilities, which many think (wrongly) are not present in mainframes, because they are networked nearly as much, and have massively fewer programs running on them, don't show up as much. But they are there.

Post by ams6110 » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 1:37 PM UTC

steven2012 wrote: post #42

jonah wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My computer had 8mb RAM at the time and NT required 16 to install so I "borrowed" another 8 from one of the school computers, installed NT and then returned the memory. It ran well enough on 8.

I was lucky enough to have a 486DX-50 (not a DX2-66)with 16 MB of RAM, so it ran perfectly for me. Even with what was bleeding edge hardware at the time, I still remember trying to finish writing my senior project using Corel Draw and Microsoft Word on Windows 3.11, and having my computer crash ever 30-45 mins, and my project partner eventually broke down and started crying because of how frustrating it was.

Post by melling » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 2:05 PM UTC

npsimons wrote: post #32

melling wrote: post #6

If anyone wants an insider's view, here's a Usenet post from one of the early Microsoft employees, Gordon Letwin: http://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post Somewhere in the Usenet archive is Gordon trolling the OS/2 users for weeks (or months?) on end. I can't remember the exact details, but he had a bet with several people that Windows would have multitasking, or that OS/2 wouldn't have some sort of mul…

So, did Letwin ever pay up?

Post by icefox » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 2:17 PM UTC

gjm11 wrote: post #112

pjmlp wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, many like to bash Windows, but the NT family is actually a VMS at heart, spoiled by a not so good user land experience. I once attend a session by him about the Windows kernel design, quite interesting.

VMS + 1 = WNT, in the same way as IBM - 1 = HAL. (So far as I know, both of these are just amusing coincidences.)

Post by peatmoss » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 2:25 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #34

adamnemecek wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The photo should be in a National Geographic captioned "A Unix beard in his natural habitat".

In its natural habitat. A Unix beard is genderless; it merely seems to exhibit a preference for male hosts.