• @mindlight@lemm.ee
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    219 months ago

    If it was OS/2 from IBM it was true multitasking and the OS in full control of memory allocation, something Microsoft only were able to offer after creating a new operating system from scratch (Windows NT).

    If you thought OS/2 took forever to boot on a 386DX with only 8MB of ram, imagine how long it would take to boot Windows NT 3.5 on that same machine…

    • @krimson@feddit.nl
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      89 months ago

      My dad ran IBM OS/2 Warp for a while on our PC. Rock stable. Shame it never really took off.

      • @mindlight@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        OS/2 3.0 “Warp” was a little too much ahead of its time and had the exact same problem that Windows Mobile had: no applications.

        IBM tried to solve that with Windows emulation but it was a headache from the start and often have a buggy experience.

        It didn’t help that the real world hardest requirements were off the charts as compared to Windows 95 (still 16-bit MS-Dos based and not even close to what OS/2 was).

        IBM did everything right from an engineering perspective but failed miserably on what the market wanted.

        It never stood a chance. IBM had always been great at delivering solutions that was well engineered. What IBM has n-e-v-e-r been good at is marketing and understanding the volume market.

    • @bus_factor@lemmy.world
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      29 months ago

      Windows NT came out of the failed collaboration with IBM and was originally meant to be OS/2 3.0. MS switched the APIs from OS/2 compatible to Windows compatible after Windows 3.0 took off, and it caused the collaboration to fall apart.