FYI, there has always been and will continue to be a plethora of applications for OS/2. Though mainstream developers avoid it like the plague (mainly due to breach of contract by IBM - who promised them money to code for os/2 then backed out when the developers delivered). and all the alleged facts in this article arent quite true... for instance, even though IBM hasn't released a new version of OS/2, they have allowed a 3rd party continue development of this operating system. Serenity systems has released in the last few years, the latest version of OS/2 called eCommStation. http://www.ecomstation.com/ for more info on that.

What really killed os/2 sales was IBM's lack of advertising, unwillingness to compete against Microsoft, promotion of windows above its own operating system,. renegging on developer promises, unwillingness to support home users (with the exception of unannounced fixpacks occasionally) and numerous other reasons.

for what its worth, my own objective opinion of OS/2 is that it was and still IS superior to the current offering from Microsoft in many ways, and far inferior in others.. for instance, the stability of OS/2 rivals and surpasses at times, that of linux, it's lean and mean, built for speed and the power user. It was the first OS that integrated into the operating system, Voice type dictation and navigation (does windows do this yet? I dont think so). it allowed you to run OS/2 native applications as well as most every linux application, most win16 applications and there was a project underway several years back to port 32 bit windows applications to OS/2 native as well (started as code name odin and evolved a few times since then last I heard). it promised you the ability to do just about anything and delivered fairly well. The biggest plus of OS/2 was - because of the way the operating system itself worked, it was virtually impossible to make a virus thayt would stay running on os/2. it was near impossible to infect. and uptimes between boots could last for years. One of the two major problems I had with os/2 was networking was NOT point and click easy.. you had to actually know what you were doing and know it inside and out to get networking between os/2 and os/2 machines working properly, and it was a nightmare to get cross platform networking working right (once you did though you never had to mess with it again). the other problem was the SIQ (single output Queue) problem that had the potential to totally lock your os/2 desktop. All in all it was and still is a very robust OS and I keep a copy ruinning on my laptop for old times sake (and actually use it every now and then :) ).

I just threw away my 50+ floppy disks of OS/2 Warp and to hear this news its really shocking. Good old days, it was great stable OS but lacked critical applications. It did its job and I was very impressed by it. Took forever to load on my 286 Machine.

Ah....a blast from the past....I recall beta testing OS/2 Warp back in a previous life and IBM would send you the 50 + disks. Back in the day it was a rock solid OS and very configurable. Actually recall quite a few apps for it....didn't need a lot of useless graphics and junk...just clean, rock solid, stable, and very adjustable clean old school computing and No CRASHES...as I recall it was great networking with it. Also, I recall it was the first OS which included it's own browser.

I ran OS/2 back in the BBS Days. It was definately a good OS but the lack of apps just killed it for mainstream use.

It definately was alot better then Dos & Deskview for multinode BBS's.. but thats all I ever really used it for.

It been in a grave nearly 10 years, now they have added the headstone.

I recommed people whom are still running OS/2 should switch to Windwos Not Linux. Don't be stupid.

OS/2 users are mostly corporations and Linux is a better choice for that then Windows. But still I dont know what was so bad about what you said that you got a -1.

-1 score...must be a linux user at betanews :)

Goodbye Norma Jean. I remember the debut of OS/2 2.0 and how impressive the OS was. Back then the best MS had to offer was Windows 3.x. If IBM had been a little wiser, they would not have provided support for Windows Apps in OS/2. This killed the product. Why would a company write an app for an OS that might or might not take off? Windows 3.x was already in it's second or third revision and had a great market share. If you could write a single app that got both the Windows users and OS/2 users, which would you do?

It's like writing software for Windows or the MAC? How many copies do you need to sell? If it's "millions", then I think we know which way you are going to go. Regardless of how good an OS is, if there's no market share (or not enough market share), the ROI doesn't add up for writing to the lower consumption platform.

As we all know, that's left a lot of great OSs out there with fewer apps and fewer reasons to put them on our desktops. Now, if we could just get MS to drop Windows and write for the MAC.... ;-)