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Testament for the Recognition of a World-wide OS/2 Warp Appreciation Day
We, the enthusiasts, historians, and technologists of the world, hereby declare the need for the recognition of a World OS/2 Warp Appreciation Day. This day shall honor and celebrate the legacy of one of the most innovative and resilient operating systems ever conceived --- OS/2 Warp. As we reflect on the advancements in technology and operating systems over the decades, it becomes increasingly clear that OS/2 Warp was not just a product of its time, but a visionary platform that set some standards for future generations of software engineering.
Ahead of Its Time: A Visionary Operating System
OS/2 Warp, developed by IBM after Microsoft's departure, was a marvel of engineering that was years ahead of its time. Released in the early 1990s, it offered features that were revolutionary, even by today’s standards. The operating system provided an unprecedented level of stability, efficiency, and multitasking capability, setting it apart from its competitors. At a time when most users were still grappling with the limitations of single-tasking environments, OS/2 Warp introduced true preemptive multitasking, allowing users to run multiple applications simultaneously without compromising system performance.
The forward-thinking architecture of OS/2 Warp included robust support for 32-bit applications at a time when 16-bit operating systems were still the norm. It also provided seamless backward compatibility with DOS and Windows applications, purportedly faster and more stable Win-OS/2 than MS Windows at the time [A better Windows than Windows, a better DOS than DOS*], making it a versatile platform that could serve a broad range of users and industries. The inclusion of the Workplace Shell (WPS) introduced an object-oriented graphical user interface, which was both intuitive and powerful, offering a level of customization and control that modern operating systems still fall short of achieving.
Robustness and Fault Tolerance: An Uncompromising Fortress
One of the most remarkable aspects of OS/2 Warp was its robustness and fault tolerance. IBM engineered OS/2 Warp to be a system that would not only perform exceptionally under normal conditions but also maintain its integrity and stability in the face of unexpected challenges. The operating system was designed to recover gracefully from software crashes and system errors, ensuring that a single faulty application could not bring the entire system down --- a level of fault tolerance that remains unmatched in many of today’s operating systems.
The beauty of OS/2 Warp lay in its meticulous attention to detail in terms of system reliability. The architecture was built with an emphasis on minimizing downtime and maximizing productivity, making it a favored choice for mission-critical environments such as banking, telecommunications, public transit logistics and industrial control systems. The system’s ability to handle large workloads and complex processes with minimal risk of failure made it a trusted platform for enterprises that demanded the highest levels of dependability.
The Legacy of OS/2 Warp: A Testament to Excellence
OS/2 Warp’s contributions to the evolution of operating systems cannot be overstated. Its legacy lives on in the many features and concepts that have been adopted by modern operating systems. However, the true brilliance of OS/2 Warp lies not just in its technological innovations, but in the vision it represented --- a vision of a world where computers could be both powerful and reliable, where users could trust their systems to perform consistently and without failure.
In recognizing a World-wide OS/2 Warp Appreciation Day, we honor not just the operating system itself, but the spirit of innovation and excellence that it embodies. We pay tribute to the engineers and developers who dared to push the boundaries of what was possible, creating a platform that was not just a product, but a paradigm shift in the way we think about computing.
Let us celebrate OS/2 Warp, not as a relic of the past, but as a beacon of what technology can achieve when driven by a commitment to quality, innovation and user empowerment. On this day when OS/2 Warp 3.0 was first released 30 years ago on October 11th 1994, we recognize the enduring impact of OS/2 Warp and re-affirm our appreciation for the operating system that was, and still is ahead of its time.
Live Long and Prosper,
Jason Page
Enthusiast and Advocate for OS/2 Warp
* Quote from: John C. Dvorak from PC Magazine in the early 1990s
This testament was last updated: 2024-08-13 @ 08:16 CST
For general computing, GNUStep(Windowmaker) works quite well for me. For certain applications that otherwise don't play well, XFCE is my go-to.
Hi Jason,
As you have probably discovered, the FreeBASIC compiler itself is written in FreeBASIC, so the bootstrapping process is a little bit tricky.
I haven't worked on FreeBASIC in quite a while, so some of this may be outdated, but my porting process for other platforms was something like this:
- Add the new target to the top-level makefile; for OS/2, this can probably be quite similar to the DOS or Windows targets.
- Get a minimal version of rtlib (the FreeBASIC runtime library) built on the target platform. The compiler itself only needs some basic startup and file I/O routines to work, so anything else can be stubbed out for now; just do enough to make the library compile successfully, even if some of the platform-specific parts won't work yet. The rtlib is written in C, so this part should be relatively easy, as long as there is a GNU toolchain (GCC and related tools) available for your target platform, which I believe is the case for OS/2.
- Add support for the new target in the fbc compiler code. If I remember correctly, this is mostly just adding the new platform to a few Select Case statements in the main fbc.bas to choose the appropriate name mangling conventions, path separators, C system libraries to link against, and similar details.
- Compile the updated fbc on a supported platform (probably Linux or Windows would be the easiest). This produces a new fbc compiler binary that still runs on Linux/Windows/... but now knows about the new OS/2 target added in the previous step.
- Use the updated fbc to cross-compile fbc itself, but now targeting OS/2 (with the fbc -target option), and make it only generate the .asm assembly source files rather than trying to assemble and link them. I believe there is a fbc -r command line option for this purpose.
- Copy the .asm files to the target platform and assemble them with the GNU assembler (as) from the native OS/2 toolchain into .o object files.
- Link the .o object files plus the rtlib compiled in the first step with the OS/2 toolchain into a minimal working native version of fbc.exe (probably easiest to avoid the ld linker itself and instead use gcc, since it will include the necessary C runtime library startup files by default).
At that point, you should have a working version of the fbc compiler that runs on the new target platform, and it should be able to compile itself again natively on the new OS without any help from the previous platform.
I'm afraid I won't be able to work directly on the porting effort myself, but please let me know if you run into any roadblocks and I can try to help point you in the right direction.
Just searching around a bit, I did find that there is a wiki page about bootstrapping fbc - this may automate some of the steps above, though I haven't tried it myself (I think it was written after I stopped working on FreeBASIC): https://www.freebasic.net/wiki/DevBootstrap
Good luck in your endeavors - I haven't used OS/2 since about 1995, but I have fond memories of running it on an IBM Aptiva with a 486!
-- Daniel