Do not forget: Spock (Leonard Nimoy) introduced OS/2 Warp

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

The full event video was shared to me and I made it available on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxKCoFutb88

Leonard Nimoy is at the start of the video, and at little bit the end ...then the hour glass explodes and almost kill one or two attendants 

Remember to leave a "thumbs up" and subscribe to the channel 

Regard

[Sigurd Fastenrath]

Is the video still available to download somewhere? I sent an Email to Mr Fastenrath but he hasn't answered.

We are celebrating our silver marriage (25) years these days, so I was busy with family business. Sorry for not answering, but Martin did shate the video I gave him, while I habe to thank Wolfgang Reineke who gave it to me before.

[Tuure Linden]

I wasn't aware of Martin's channel but now I'm a subscriber. Other OS/2 related channels are WarpEvents, os2memories, OS2memories, Warpstock Europe and Sigurd Fastenrath. Are there still more channels I should be aware of?

When watching the Warp launch event from 1994 I just keep on wondering what went wrong. Here in Finland I remember when I saw a pc running Warp 3.0 next to another one running Windows 95 beta back in 1994 in a local computer store. If my memory serves me right, I got my own copy in 1996 when a friend of mine won one in a lottery and sold it to me. And after Warp 4.0 was introduced a lot of copies of Warp 3.0 sold on a large discount and later they were even given away for free. The situation might have been that there were a large amount of copies in Finland but the demand for them was quite modest. There were lots of things Warp 3.0 did better than Windows 95 and backwards compatibility with DOS and Windwos 3,1 shouldn't have been a problem either: some Windows 3,1 software that ran under OS/2 didn't run under Windows 95. Windows 95 was also more unstable. But OS/2 wasn't perfect either, it wasn't "as solid as a rock" and it was possible to hang up the system. Things got better with Warp 4.0... But still when using ArcaOS nowadays reboots are some times required when, for example, WinOS/2 session hangs completely and CAD popup doesn't always work.

Did IBM fail because of bad marketing? David Barnes did all that he could and was a good speaker in a front of audience but why wasn't it enough? But when I think back Microsoft was a market leader and usually won all its rivals. At my school we used WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS and later 6.0 for Windows but they ware replaced by Microsoft Word 6.0 for some reason unknown to me. Maybe Word had already become a market leader by then. It was also in around 1996. Linux was also far superior operating system compared to Windows 9X when it comes to stability but still Windows dominated the market. And the only reason for Linux to be a bit successful is it's being free and open-source. Might the open-source route have gained more popularity to OS/2 also? But like it has been said, making the os source available will never happen because of the licensing issues and IBM has no interest in spending more money and time to it.

It's quite amazing that loyal users have kept OS/2 alive and you can run it on "bare metal" even now in 2019. Many other old operating systems have disappeared completely into obsolescence. Many of them, however, have been released as open-source later like CP/M and others.

[xynixme]

Did IBM fail because of bad marketing?

Windows 95 and cheap computer with just 4 MiB of RAM was the best market condition ever, but popular shops should have told their customers that OS/2 also required more RAM. Now the order was Windows 95, tears, OS/2, even more tears, memory upgrades and Windows 95. You can blame marketing, but that's almost the same as claiming that a problem actually was s "communication problem".

In theorie they should have started selling cheap OS/2-hardware with more than enough RAM installed, but it's hard to do that when you've got a few months to complete such a mission. Suddenly the market conditions were rather specific: Windows 95, and hardware which was too cheap. In theory they could have started selling OS/2 with false hardware requirements, to not sell swapping and the OS/2 clock cursor to those customers.

[Tuure Linden]

When I installed Warp 3 for the first time the hardware was very modest.... A Nokia (yes, they made computers back then) 25MHz 386DX with 4MB of RAM. And yes, it really was SLOW. Later I used a Digital 33MHz 486SX with 8MB of RAM and it was much much faster. And finally 100MHz Pentium, there wasn't much performance difference compared to the 486 but the 386 with the minium RAM was almost unusable (but it wasn't fast better with Windows 95 either).

My friend bought a new IBM Aptiva 486 in late 1994 or early 1995 and I never understood why it came with PC-DOS and Windows 3,1 installed instead of OS/2. Why didn't IBM ship OS/2 with its own computer models?

[xynixme]

My friend bought a new IBM Aptiva 486 in late 1994 or early 1995 and I never understood why it came with PC-DOS and Windows 3,1 installed instead of OS/2. Why didn't IBM ship OS/2 with its own computer models?

My restriction is eCS 1.2, FWIW. Hence nothing newer than a single core Pentium 4 CPU at best.

In general IBM was about options or choices, so the customers decided. In 1994 it was possible to order OS/2 2.1 pre-installed, without any obligations to support all configurations. Presumably the most popular, or cheapest, or most realistic choice of users was a default, i.e. their DOS and Microsoft's GUI. An understandable choice. Selling copies of OS/2 is not a goal of a hardware-selling hardware division.

[Doug Bissett]

Why didn't IBM ship OS/2 with its own computer models?

That is actually a very complicated question, that I will attempt to answer briefly.

There were two, completely separate, divisions in IBM. One handled building PCs (and they were originally responsible for having Microsoft make the BIOS, and DOS). The other handled software development, other than DOS. Rumor has it, that they were across the hall from each other, but I don't think that was true. The IBM PC was always looked upon as being a "toy", by upper management, and they pretty much ignored anybody who said that it had a lot of potential, if it had a proper operating system. Somehow, somebody did manage to get both projects off the ground, but the two divisions hated each other, and would never cooperate. IBM actually made a pretty good PC, but others came along and made them cheaper, with better support (remember, the PC was just a "toy", so upper management didn't care). Meanwhile Microsoft was learning a lot about how to make software work, and OS/2 made a pretty good base for something cheaper, so Microsoft made sure that they owned a license to use whatever OS/2 had. They also contributed a few things to OS/2, just to be sure they had a foot in the door. Eventually, Microsoft walked out on IBM, and created windows (much to the relief of the PC department, because they had an outside alternative).

There was also the legal problems with bundling software with a PC. IBM was flat out not allowed to do that, while Microsoft engaged in a kickback scheme to get all manufacturers (including IBM - remember that the PC department hated the OS/2 department) to install their software. IBM did manage to install OS/2 on some machines, but windows was always what came up first, so most users didn't even know there was an alternative, or they figured it wasn't worth the effort to even try it. Knowledgeable businesses did recognize that OS/2 was superior, and many did embrace it. At that time, IBM did try advertising OS/2, but that fell flat on its face because they had no experience with selling to the general public (and, the marketing department didn't believe it would ever sell anyway). Meanwhile, Microsoft did a very flashy advertising program, aimed directly at young people. IBM went back into their shell (still believing that the PC had no future), and Microsoft basically took over the PC world. Eventually, the IBM PC department was sold off to Lenovo, and IBM decided to abandon OS/2.

It is an interesting study, to look at what the IBM share prices did, over that period, and upper management still looked upon the PC as being a "toy" (probably still do).

Here we are, 25 years later, still trying to make OS/2 work on modern hardware. Fortunately, the OS/2 base was well designed, and it is possible to fix many of the long term problems, and add new features. The main problem is that we just don't have enough people, who know what they are doing, to keep up with the demand, and there are licensing problems with the IBM development tools, which makes it difficult for a programmer to get started. Most "new" development is done by porting software from the Linux world, which has introduced it's own set of problems, but it does keep the platform alive.

[Dennis Smith]

My friend bought a new IBM Aptiva 486 in late 1994 or early 1995 and I never understood why it came with PC-DOS and Windows 3,1 installed instead of OS/2. Why didn't IBM ship OS/2 with its own computer models?

IBM had hardware compatibility and driver issues on Aptivas when OS/2 Warp was first released.  Retail Warp versions actually had a sheet of paper inside the box telling the buyer to call IBM Tech Support for a software update diskette and special installation instructions for Aptivas.  By mid-1995 IBM was selling Aptivas preinstalled with DOS/Win 3.11 and OS/2 Warp 3.  It was called Selecta-System.  You could chose between operating systems.  Later Windows 95 was added to the mix.

IBM offered quite a few computers models pre-installed with OS/2 during the 1994-1996 time frame.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

Did IBM fail because of bad marketing?

Windows 95 and cheap computer with just 4 MiB of RAM was the best market condition ever....

I also remember that on that moment Microsoft wanted everybody to use Windows NT, but it used as much as resources at OS/2. So Microsoft came with the idea to make a "mediocre/average/poor" OS that uses less resources, until hardware price catch up with Windows NT. That Windows was 95, 98, and Me (millennium), after those editions Microsoft finally consolidated all Windows to NT with Windows XP.  So maybe hardware requirement and prices at that time were a problem for OS/2.

On the other hand the IBM PC clone industry was growing at that time, and Compaq, HP, Packard Bell, etc,etc... didn't want to buy the OS from his competition, IBM, so they felt safe with Microsoft, a software exclusive company that will not compete with them in hardware... 

And Microsoft used to also have an almost illegal strategy to charge more for a Windows OEM license to companies that offers PCs with more OSes.

Regards

[Tuure Linden]

And what would be OS/2 like today if IBM hadn't abandoned it? Would it be nothing like ArcaOS?

When compared to Windows, many things have changed.... and usually for worse. I stopped using Windows completely when XP came out. I just hated it. It was ugly and early version had some issues with my hardware. I used only Linux almost for 10 years. I don't remember when I stopped using OS/2 Warp 3 but it must have been about the time Windows 2000 came out. I once had even a triple boot system with OS/2 Warp 3, Redhat Linux 6.0 and Windows NT 4.0. Later it was only Windows and then only Linux.

Windows Vista and 7 completely messed up how network configuration is done... And what were they thinking when making Windows 8? Windows 10 is a completely mess. I've used it and have it installed on some computers but they have completely messed up system configuration and big changes are made in every release. The system is also spying on users and some very annoying software is installed by default (Candy Crush Saga and other crapware). They UI is ugly... but it's getting better. Actually I kinda liked Windows Vista's look, 7 was uglier.

With OS/2 there are many things that work and it's nice to have a system that hasn't changed that much. But because I haven't used it for over a decade many things have to be re-learned now when I'm using ArcaOS. With modern Linux distributions there's also this problem that everything changes too much. I liked the time when you needed to complie the kernel yourself and edit XF86Config, lilo.conf etc. It was logical and clear. Nowadays it's not anymore. But ArcaOS is almost same that OS/2 Warp over two decades ago. Ofcourse mixing it up with OSS and RPM etc makes thing a bit more confusing but as a long time Linux user I don't find that to be a problem. But what changed would IBM have done? Would "a modern OS/2" be something as terrible as Windows 10? At lest Windows 10 seems to be very stable compared to many former Windows versions (2003 server excluded, it must have been the most stable Windows ever).

[Sigurd Fastenrath]

Completly different experience, using OS/2 and Windows on a lot of different hardware since 1994. To get a Game like BIOFORGE to run under pure DOS was as tricky (remember the 640kb free RAM needed) as to install Warp 3. Windows 95 was faulty, but cool and all the new Games have been supported. And the Stones advertisement "Start me up" was just fantastic. Windows 98 SE was quite a good and stable version.

Windows xp was great, felt to me like: this is what OS/2 would have look alike if serious development would have continued. Pretty fast and stable. Indeed a lot of OS/2 was still inside. Vista was a mess as it was to slow and did try to prevent the user from making mistakes by restrictions in the rights. I remember feeling to spent more time on checking confirmation boxes than actually working with it.

Windows 7 was and is really great. It corrected almost every short coming of Vista. 64 bit became really usable. I personally was impressed by Windows 8.1 as I like the Touch interface very much. I even used a Windows 8 (Nokia 640) and Windows 10 Mobile (Microsoft Lumia 950XL- personally the best phone so far) phone as long as possible.

Funny: Microsoft did exactly the same errors with Windows phone that IBM did with OS/2. History repeats if you take a closer look at it...

Using Windows 10 for about 4 years for my business now (Windows for more than 20 Years now), never had problems. Yes, I am the lucky one. Installed this May my new Sever with Windows Server 2019 and have to admit: the easiest and best Server Software I ever installed. So easy to install and manage, compared to other or earlier versions.

Changed the phone to a Samsung Galaxy, not because of the phone but for the future hardware: the Galaxy Watch LTE. The best piece of hardware I bought during the last 10 years... If it would have a camera and a bit more space (both I think will come in the next couple of years) I would have had already sold my mobile phone. It is such a fantastic device. Using the watch since almost a year now.

I am about to switch from collecting Laptops to collecting Smart watches.

As time permits I am still "falling back" on my hobby to try to get OS/2 to run nativ on modern hardware, with the Thinkpad 25 ( aka a special Lenovo Thinkpad T470 version) as my latest, and I would guess, greatest success in this case.

EDIT: I have to correct myself: thinking about it the greatest success was the Lenovo X200Tablet Laptop, because:

- I was able to install eComstation 2 next to Preloaded Windows 7 (something Mensys said is "Not Possible" at that time)
- I managed to get to run:
-> LAN
-> WLAN (Thanks to a patched BIOS and the 4965 WLAN Driver by Willibald Meyer)
-> WWAN / UMTS (!) (Thanks to the USB Modem Driver and Injoy Dialer)
-> Stylus Support (later Touch support as well) thanks to Wim Brul
-> ACPI Support (Thanks to Mensys ACPI Driver)
-> SNAP in VESA Mode, so WinOS2 and DOS running both seamless and fullscreen
-> SMP Support
All in all I would say this was the best supported Laptop regarding OS/2 I ever had (and still have :-)  )

Will see where the future will lead me to, but my focus is going to change on Smart Watches, I guess.

[Doug Bissett]

And what would be OS/2 like today if IBM hadn't abandoned it? Would it be nothing like ArcaOS?

If IBM had done it properly, it would probably be more like the large system operating systems (which have probably morphed into something that I know nothing about). If they had simply continued on the same path, it would probably resemble ArcaOS, in some ways, but, assuming they still had the source code, it would have been relatively easy to add goodies like 64 bit capability, WiFi, USB 3, etc. Arca Noae is basically flying blind (no source code), and trying to do the same things that IBM did with a couple of hundred people. IBM also had access to manufacturers, to find out exactly how various pieces of hardware actually work.

Later it was only Windows and then only Linux

You missed all the fun...

Windows Vista and 7 completely messed up how network configuration is done... And what were they thinking when making Windows 8? Windows 10 is a completely mess.

 XP was getting to be pretty good, near the end of life. Vista was a mess. Hackers made it necessary to change the way networking was done (not that MS got it right, but they sort of made the rules). 7 is arguably still the best windows, ever, but 10 is pretty well there, as long as you avoid as much of the additional windows crap as you can. 8 was an attempt to turn the PC into a cell phone, 8.1 almost succeeded. 9 was so bad that it never saw the light of day. I have never seen a windows cell phone. I do know that I would never actually use one, voluntarily. Android is bad enough, and, from what I have seen, Apple isn't any better.

Windows 10 is actually getting better, as long as you stay away from the garbage that it includes. However, OS/2 can still get the job done, without all the extra bells and whistles that simply slow things down (not to mention the required malware protection). Too bad it is taking so long to get the basics (WiFi, USB3, etc.), for OS/2, but that is slowly taking shape.

I am about to switch from collecting Laptops to collecting Smart watches.

It would be interesting to get OS/2 working on one of them, but I suspect that Panorama won't run the video. 

[Tuure Linden]

Personally I think that Windows 10 really has mixed everything up. They are getting rid of the tradiotional Control Panel and it's hard to find right places to change the system settings. They also have changed the terms used which makes it more difficult to find what you're looking for. Yes, it's a stable and usable system and can be tweaked to look better and there are even third party free tools like ClassicShell. It could be worse but I don't like the way they're going. In the lates major update they made some changes, however, that I like. And I use Windows 10 when needed and I don't absolutely hate it. It just could be much much better. I like using MacOs more than Windows and I also own several Macs.

At some point I wanted to try Windows Phone and bought a second-hand Nokia Lumia to run it for a couple of weeks. It wasn't bad. Android has had more confusing UI. I've also tried SailfishOS but now I have an iPhone 6s and Nokia 8 so I run boght iOs and Android. And off-topic: I personally thas hate everything Samsung does, I hate their customer service, the quality of their software and the crappy design of the products (I refuse to repair any Samsung electronics, I say to customer that I just won't touch them anymore, I've had enoght of them). And Samsung seems to hate me because it doesn't matter if it's a SSD drive or a DVD-player or a microwave oven: everything made by them always breaks if I happen to own it or get in touch with it. I have unwillingly had their product withing computers and for free from customers when selling new electronics to them. Some years ago I made a mistake and actually bought some products made by them, but I won't do that mistake again.

But anyway, I like to test things and back in the day even used BeOS for a while and have occasionally tested HaikuOS.

[Doug Bissett]

They are getting rid of the tradiotional Control Panel

Well, it is still there, FWIW. It can look, and work, pretty much the same as winXP, if you simply click on View by -> small icons (or large icons, if you prefer). A few things have moved around, but it is essentially the same old thing (vista and 7 also have that. I never saw 8, or 8.1).

They also have changed the terms used which makes it more difficult to find what you're looking for.

Microsoft is making a feeble effort to appear to protect the user from themselves, and from hackers. If that happens to work out in their (MS) favor, that is a bonus (for them). It does make life more difficult for those who manage, and maintain, computers, but it also makes them a LOT more money, so they don't complain.

It just could be much much better

All software (and almost everything else that you could name) could be a lot better. The problem is, that nobody bothers to do it, because they know that the public will accept whatever they throw at them. Of course, there is also the lack of time, talent, and cash, to do it better. Even Microsoft won't spend the cash, and if they did, they would price themselves out of the market. It all depends on what the market will buy, and somebody will always be willing to do it cheaper. Of course, the old saying "You get what you pay for" comes into play. Then again, if you buy a toaster for $10, and it lasts half as long as a $30 toaster, it may be worth the aggravation of having to replace it.

I am not trying to defend anybody here, it is just the way that the market economy works. If people will buy it, somebody will supply it (then, somebody else will supply it cheaper, and so on, until whatever it is won't work any more and people stop buying it). That includes selling advertising on web sites, and in operating systems. Of course, somebody needs to pay the developers, somehow, or the product goes away. The sad part is, that when a product goes away, because somebody undercut others, it can be very difficult, and expensive, to get somebody else to start building a product that does work. There is also the knowledge factor, If nobody, or only a few people, know how to do something, it is much more difficult to produce a working product. OS/2 seems to be a classic example of that.

[Mathias]

Tuure Linden> I liked the time when you needed to complie the kernel yourself and edit XF86Config, lilo.conf etc. It was logical and clear. Nowadays it's not anymore.

Hehe, you can still do this, if you prefer so. Distributions like [Gentoo Linux] do it that way.
First you boot from a minimal CD/stick (unfortunately no floppy bootable medium supported), then you download kernel and co, configure it, compile it, install the boot manager and tools like cron (if you like), and so on. YOU can choose what you want to use on that system. They advertise their distro with the words: "It's all about choice."

I went away from Windows (like you) when XP introduced that st*pid online activation and used Gentoo since then. But I stopped using Gentoo (was it 2017?) because it became wayyy tooo much choice for me. YOU need to maintain numerous Python installations to make all depedencies happy, and if you like to have a GUI, it's getting even more interesting. :>

Well.. back then it was easier because it was less choice than today. But IF you prefer choice over comfort, then Gentoo is for you. :>