"Austin L. Denyer" wrote:
~~ snip ~~
>
> As for the decline, I seem to recall that the next release (which would
> have been FAR better) was originally a joint IBM/Micro$oft project. The
> two had a problem seeing eye to eye and Micro$oft pulled out.
> (Micro$oft then proceeded to remove all IBM code from OS/3, replaced it
> with Micro$oft code, re-named it Win95 and the rest is history...).
>
> There never was much support for OS/2. Comparatively few applications
> were ever ported, and (compared to the competition at the time) was a
> real resource hog.
>
> Just my $0.02 (Florida residents add 6.5% Sales Tax)
>
> Regards,
> Ozz.
Not quite. OS/2 began as a joint project, but ended up split. IBM
continued OS/2 development, and Microsoft created Windows NT (with much
guidance from former DEC employees with VMS experience). Win95 came
about much later, about the time OS/2 2.1 and Warp 3 were available.
Although it required lots of memory (16MB ran it well, but 4 to 8MB was
common at the time), it has always required less than Win95 and NT.
Microsoft's marketing dominance relegated OS/2 to primarily mission
critical apps, like those used in nuclear plants, ATMs, and financial
institutions--and now custom set-top boxes for accessing the Internet.
Believe it or not, OS/2 is still profitable to IBM: over $5M in profit
the last year.
Now back to the more relevant Linux programming..
Bob
