That “niche” you described was actually a desktop computing norm form more than a decade.
Let’s also not forget RISC OS, Atari TOS, AmigaOS, GEOS, SkyOS and numerous DOS frontends including, but not limited to, Microsoft Windows.
Let’s also not forget RISC OS, Atari TOS, AmigaOS, GEOS, SkyOS and numerous DOS frontends including, but not limited to, Microsoft Windows.
To further my thoughts a bit, the distinction I would place on OS/2 over DOS is double: 1) first class memory protection 2) full preemptive multitasking. The distinction I would place against all widely used modern desktop OSes is the lack of first class multi-user support.
Early Windows gains cooperative multi-tasking like Mac OS classic but neither fundamentally use memory protection the way later OSes normalize and that turns out to be a pretty clear dead end. I believe there are extensions for both that retrofit protection in. Both also have some add on approaches to multi-user but are not first class designs.
So, even the most robust single user system that implements full memory protection and preemptive multitasking still seems to be stuck in a valley. I.e. whatever the actual cost in terms of implementation and increase in cognitive workload for single user systems (i.e. "enter your administrative password" prompts on current macOS or Windows administrative accept dialogs) seems to be accepted by the masses.
And note that this isn't an implicit a negative judgement, for instance I find BeOS or those in your list can be absolutely fascinating. And OS/2 is lovely even today for certain niche or retrocomputing things. Just pointing out that NT made a better bet for the long term, and some of that undoubtedly related to the difference of a couple years.. keep in mind OS/2 ran on a 286, which NT completely bypassed.
I don't believe Windows 2.0 implemented preemptive tasking, can you show a reference so I can learn?
1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2.0#Release_versions
2 - https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/78006.html
3 - https://lobste.rs/s/4xfswa/what_was_difference_between_windo...
4 - https://anotherboringtopic.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-micros...
The Lobsters discussion was very interesting. Some people in there were extremely knowledgeable, but also very confrontational. Coming straight in going "that's all wrong!" is not a productive way to start a discussion IMHO.
I didn't get any very firm conclusions from it. There are some very knowledgeable people out there on the WWW claiming, with convincing arguments, that Windows/286 couldn't run in 286 mode and only gave you 640kB ("conventional memory" in DOS terminology)+ 64kB HMA.
Others, including from Microsoft, say no, Windows/286 did run in protect mode and could access 16MB of (segmented) RAM.
I do not know for sure who is right.
(Windows 3.x 386 mode is similar, with Windows 9x stuff in the Windows VM can pre-emptively multitask, mostly).
That is how user switching in XP works, and how RDP works. You can have an arbitrary number of sessions of logged in users at once, only limited by the license for what version of Windows you have installed.
There have also been versions of Windows that allow multiple users to interact with each other at once, but I believe these have all been cancelled and I do not know to what extent these simultaneous users had their own accounts.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows#Early_versio...
Microsoft get a lot of stick but Windows of the 90s do bring a lot to table. And by 9x DOS was basically a boot loader.
But I agree that DOS was effectively just a bootloader for the 9x era of Windows. I was just being flippant in my previous post however you guys are right to call me on it.