Ask HN: Why IBM's OS/2 Warp Has Failed?

7 points·meerita··4 comments

Does anyone have an good article about its demise? I remember installing OS/2 many years ago. It was like a more powerful version of Windows 95, but since I had to work with W95 all day, I lost track of the progress and crash of this operating system.

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For consumers, it was more like NT and didn’t support the devices or software you would want.

For business, it was too IBM to succeed. The company was going through rough times, and the sales executives would always push high margin mainframe.

I recall debugging a "why wont this CDROM drive work on OS/2" problem. Not only did they check the ID numbers returned by the BIOS, they went so far as to query the device name string. Which in this case was the fault, as it had "8x" instead of the "2x" and "4x" versions OS/2 would accept.

They went they extra mile to step on themselves. Entertaining to watch but an expensive ticket for the ride. Linux was free, growing, far more fun, and worked better.

but since I had to work with W95 all day

There's the answer. W95 had the momentum. The "barrier to entry" for OS/2 was just too great.

Also OS/2 was very, very expensive, while W95 came 'free' with your new PC.

It's a shame it was so expensive in the beginning. I was given a copy of OS/2 Extended Edition from a local IBM guy. I saved up enough money to buy a used C complier and spent a few years working on a project. I really enjoyed programming on OS/2.

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