I wonder if i would be using linux today? I think that me(and a lot of other people) started using linux because they were frustrated. OS/2 was drastically better than windows 95, and if IBM kept that trend going, i wonder if we would be using linux, or if we would be happy with our IBM 2005 Operating system.

OS/2 had a lot of good things, but one thing it was known for was inefficient code. There are old articles analyzing the IBM/M$ divorce and one of the key issues was that IBM measured productivity by lines of code written over time, whereas M$ measured it with more focus on efficiency, and believe it or not, an eye on fewer defects/lines of code. Slam M$ all you want, but IBM was no angel.

OS/2 was different, and some of the philosophy of OS/2 was vastly superior to Windows 95, but remember that much of the NT family of Windows was derived directly from the OS/2 project and could in fact (and still can) run OS/2 1.2 programs.

How did you/did "they" assess that? I've had plenty of
hands-on experience with OS/2, and if lack of performance
were a measurement I must say that on identical hardware
OS/2 beat the heck out of both Win95 and NT (3, 3.51 and 4)
in terms of performance, and in how "smooth" multi-tasking was
handled ...


And in answer to the original poster: "That's a silly thing to
ask" :} ... OS/2's main 2 problems were: a) lack of driver support
by the hardware vendors and b) lack of 3rd party applications.

When IBM was trying to place the (clearly superior) product
WARP3 against the hype of Win95 there was no commitment
from others what-so-ever, and as far as I'm concerned OS/2
was doomed - no one outside the corporate world was using
it, and once it became impossible to get newer version of MS
Office (the ones geared towards win95 and the new memory
model couldn't run in OS/2 anymore) it was pretty much finished.


But IF OS/2 had survived I'd probably still have moved on,
OS/2 was a single-user system with insufficient support
for varied profiles ... and even though REXX in OS/2 with
support for CID made OS/2 as flexible to administer from a
command-line as Linux I still like Linux better after years of
exclusive use.

[edit]Btw, I still think that in terms of "GUI and OS integration"
there's still no product out there that can hold a candle to
the WPS, and I can't emphasise enough how much I wish
that IBM passed the source for the WPS on to the Open Source
community. Amen :}[/edit]


Cheers,
Tink (IBM certified OS/2 Engineer, former member of TeamOS/2)

Mmmm. Hard one... It's likely I'd be using Warp 10 or something.

I multibooted for some time, mostly going to Linux due to more driver support and better web tools and such.

The pressure for me personally to move to linux may have been less if OS/2 was well supported, so it's a difficult one to ask, but I think Linux would still have developed much as it did now due to the desire for a OS multiuser system...

That was a funny joke about MS code efficiancy tho

OS/2 had one thing going for it,...
The original Galactic Civilizations...

I'm still bummed I can't run that one.

C'mon mate, IBM didn't make such dramatic version
jumps, we'd probably be on WARP 6 :)


*sigh*


Cheers,
Tink

Neither did Patrick till Slackware 10.

Huh?

What's that supposed to mean? :)


Cheers,
Tink

Hypothetically speaking (very hypothetically of course) Warp could've jumped on the 10.0 bandwagon too - just like Pat

True but if OS/2 had one the battle, and ms windows became what mac is today(a minority) then hardware developers would focus on OS/2 instead of windows and OS/2 woudl have had excellent support and i might be posting this.

"Do you think that if windows 95 won the 1995 desktop battle that i would still be using linux? Most of the people here have moved to linux after having problems with OS/2, and if windows 95 had won maybe we would all very satisfied with Windows 2005."

whoa, kind of wierd to think about.

I really liked OS/2. Ran it from version 1.x up to the original Warp on a variety of hardware. Incredibly stable, did lots of 32-bit programming there (migrated there straight from DOS with 32-bit extenders, no stopping at Windows 3.x)... :-) Never expected them to win the OS war, was just using the best tools at the time.

If OS/2 had won the 1995 desktop battle, it would have had profound effects on the history of Microsoft and the industry. You can kiss Microsoft's anti-monopoly suits goodbye. More importantly, you can kiss the REASONS for the Microsoft anti-monopoly suits goodbye.

Internet Explorer? Without Windows 95 bundling and Windows 98 "integration", IE is just another browser. As Netscape descends into mediocrity, IE could acheive parity--but it would take longer and it wouldn't have become so lopsidedly dominant. Who knows how good an IE might have been by now, if it hadn't been frozen in development? It might even be W3C compliant!

Java? Without Microsoft's sabotage, Java will have been far more successful. OTOH, without the rallying call of fighting the Microsoft monopoly, the grand Java coalition wouldn't have been formed in the first place. Java would merely have been seen as a Sun product, not a Microsoft slayer.

MS Office? Parts of Office may still have become de facto standards, like MS Word. However, Outlook express would never have gotten far (remember when "e-mail virus" was just a silly hoax to take in 'net newbies?). Access might not have ever made much of a dent compared to faster established alternatives like Foxpro.

Basically, the software industry would have been far richer with competing alternatives pushing each other into providing better value to the customers. A heck of a lot of MICROSOFT software would have been a heck of a lot better.

In this context, how does Linux fare? Not as well, I think. A lot of Linux's success can be attributed to how crappy Microsoft software is. But in a vibrant competitive software environment, there isn't room for Microsoft's stagnant just-barely-good-enough pre-bundled software.