Why nobody cares about OS/2, and RISCOS?

hugosl · 30 Jan 2017 at 03:02

Why people worship atheist GNU/Linux, and do not care about tragic RISCOS, the UK's own OS, and their RISCPC, and tragic OS/2?

ultralaser · 30 Jan 2017 at 10:13

Well that escalated quickly.

joeyjojo · 30 Jan 2017 at 10:40

I'd try RISC OS if I were in possession of a compatible ARM device.

Probably GNU/Linux has much greater popularity because it works on so many more systems. For all the time RISC OS was available on Acorn/Castle machines, GNU/Linux worked on most PCs and servers. No comparison really.

memyselfandi · 30 Jan 2017 at 21:51

I played with various versions of OS/2 at one point ... at the time it was quite interesting (probably round the 2.1 through Warp period). But that is long ago now.

I won't say that my Dad worked in the IBM labs at the time so we got all the betas to try which gave a steady supply of high quality 3.5" floppies to use for other things

Woden · 30 Jan 2017 at 21:53

Linux runs on pretty much everything, while RISCOS and OS/2 were rather limited hardware-wise.

Personally, I kinda miss and VAX. Used it at uni and liked it a lot. Don't even know why.

Rroff · 30 Jan 2017 at 21:58

I still dabble with RISC OS now and again - dumped the ROMs from my old A3010 and run it under Windows emulated. Sadly there is little practical application for RISC OS these days.

Feek · 30 Jan 2017 at 22:30

I tried OS/2 Warp and remember being very underwhelmed by it.

hyperseven · 31 Jan 2017 at 02:07

Feek said:
I tried OS/2 Warp and remember being very underwhelmed by it.

Got a copy of that free, well we all did when I was working for big blue.

picnic · 31 Jan 2017 at 08:27

Warp was much more stable than Windows was back in the day, especially from a networking POV. Shame it was dropped by IBM, it was my preferred OS at the time.

lude1962 · 31 Jan 2017 at 09:05

Feek said:
I tried OS/2 Warp and remember being very underwhelmed by it.

agreed, also found the method for installing hw printers etc to be 'clunky'

but business decided ms office and windows was the way forward, ibm couldn't compete

SupraWez · 31 Jan 2017 at 10:35

We removed the last of our OS2 based machines approx 6+ years ago and replaced them with WinXP. They were solid, failure was normally hardware related not software, as were the Netware 3.11/12 servers we used for the backend

Rroff · 31 Jan 2017 at 23:37

Don't think I've even seen a machine running OS/2 since 1997.

HoneyBadger · 2 Feb 2017 at 20:07

Warp was great, strangely great for gaming as with a bit of code you could go beyond the 640k base memory limit!

Quartz · 3 Feb 2017 at 00:13

OS/2 was wonderful. Far better than Windows 95. But IBM hamstrung it by restricting it to a single input queue. IBM were also hamstrung by that consent decree which meant they couldn't market it properly and support developers. There was also the issue of internal IBM politics. I used it until 1998 or 99 when the betas of Windows 2000 appeared which made Windows NT actually usable.

And yes, it was great for gaming. I remember playing Wing Commander while my email was downloading in the background. Heady stuff for the early 90s.