Now , about Linux Mint ...

The relationship between NT and 32-bit OS/2 is very murky. It is known that Microsoft was working on 32-bit OS/2 2.0 in the late

In 1990, after Microsoft internally decided to dump OS/2 and concentrate entirely on Windows, most of Microsoft?s OS/2 developers were reassigned to NT. However, that did not influence the basic design of NT, which had been created long before then. NT adopted several technologies from OS/2, but very little or no code (16-bit Intel assembly code was of little use within NT). HPFS and FAT filesystem support was written from scratch for NT, the NDIS network driver interface underwent a major overhaul, LAN Manager components were rewritten.

On a more mundane level, OS/2 was the platform used to build NT before NT became self-supporting. After all, who wanted to develop on DOS. Aside from editors and compilers, OS/2 also ran the Intel i860 emulator used in the very early stages of NT development, before any hardware was available.

After the Microsoft-IBM split, the relationship between NT and OS/2 became somewhat schizophrenic. Microsoft sometimes tried to pretend that OS/2 had never existed and sometimes loudly bad-mouthed anything IBM did with OS/2. At the same time, NT (up to and including Windows

In the end, Windows NT survived and OS/2 did not, although OS/2?s demise had arguably more to do with Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 than NT.

What you wrote isn't wrong, mind you, but, what I wrote isn't wrong, either. :)

They have a very, checkered past to say the least. And, I was still a kid when this all went down. Suffice to say, OS/2 didn't make it, and NT is still alive and well (er, depending on your POV)

One good thing about most of the old IBM PCs of the '80s is that they came with good keyboards. I know a lot of people who used their IBM keyboards long after the PC it came with was landfill.

As for vintage PCs, I have a hard time thinking of any PC that I've thought was interesting enough to keep around as more or less a curio. I have an Apple IIGS Woz Edition though, and wish I had an Altair or maybe a Heathkit H11... :) I also have some old Sun hardware that I've fired up occasionally, but I'll probably chuck even that since it's not that fun to play with compared to say a Raspberry Pi.

I just don't have enough time to play with all the cool new toys there are, let alone old ones.

I never ran any of the DOS-based Windows versions, and don't associate the word "great" with any of Microsoft's software. (Although I suppose you could say that much of it is a great PITA.)

I used OS/2 from 2.1 to Merlin and was pretty happy with it, but I've talked to people who developed apps for OS/2 and they say that it wasn't that wonderful. It had IBM working on it, where developers were judged by how many KLOCs (1000s of Lines Of Code) they could churn out, so not much in the way of elegant code got added in that way. Then you had some clowns at Microsoft where they didn't care about the quality of the code, they just wanted to crank it out, sell it, and then fondle their stock options. I've read that Microsoft also did some things to sabotage the OS/2 development effort, and of course they left a lot of stuff half-finished when they screwed IBM and concentrated on Windows 3 instead.

The core of NT was evidently quite good, but the people who were developing the GUI parts also decided that it would be a good idea to try to learn C++ at the same time. I've read that Cutler was not happy with how they turned his silk purse into a sow's ear.

I think that's EComStation, which is what OS/2 is being called these days. I thought about seeing if I could get it running in a VM, but could never drum up enough interest to do so. (I've played with an Amiga emulator and a Commodore 64 emulator in the past, and once I got it up and working, I was at the "what do I do with it now?" stage and I suspect it would be the same with OS/2.)

Can't recall, the machine is packed away somewhere

When we ran boards, windows 95 wasn't so hot on those

NT3.1 was not terribly stable but from NT3.51 on it was pretty good IMHO

ECS is the present incarnation of OS/2

OS/2 ran well on IBM hardware but not so well on other.

ECS seems to work better.

I keep it just as a novelty

At one time I had a lot of those good/ sturdy click/clack keyboards, I think I only have one left/

I use to spend hours fooling with those antiques but packed away or gave away all of them

I do wish I'd kept my coco3...It was my first computer.

I don't know what happened to it.

Same here.

ROFL. :)

It did have some issues some serious with the way in which it did things and expected you to interact with it, but, still not as a bad as it was during win3.x days. And, as another poster commented, you could fuckup your code in one console/session and cause a cascade crash throughout the OS. That sucked ass at times...

When writing the kernel for an OS, that's not the time to practice a new language. :(

Ahh. That explains it. I haven't seen os/2 (or warp) since the board was taken down for the last time, it was time for the SysOp to attend college and it was time for me to be moving on as well. So, I never kept up with it. I do miss those days though. Things were so much different. a good board had something very close to a real family. We'd goto cookouts, help each other out in person, etc. Nothing like things are today.

I even remember a weekend I spent at my buddies house who ran the board. It was time to do a system wide backup. He asked how much space I had on my 486DLC/40 (yea, cyrix) along with the other CoSysOps. We networked them with cat5 (practically unheard of then) and did a major data backup, spanning across to other machines so he could replace a bad hd and put the data back and get the board back up and going. That was fun as hell man. For all of us. Was our first time actually hands on networking the boxes in that way. [g]

I loaded an apple emulator a few months ago. I did the same thing as you when I got it running. Okay, cool, just like I remember it. Now, WTF am I going to do with this thing? I have NOTHING it knows about, and, nothing I have outside of it's emulated world will even talk to it.. so.. what good is it now. lol.

So, I fired up oregon trail and ran it for a couple of hours. Other than the trip down memory lane as a kiddo, it was of no further use. It was kind of neat that I remembered all the keyboard commands and was able to get out of the running game and edit variables on the fly; the old 'cheats' still worked. [g] Of course they would have, the computer and game thought it was the 80s. heh.

I still play nintendo on an emulator from time to time on my linux lappies. Avoid the noid, Mike tysons super punchout; before Nintendo re-released it without tyson. Last night, I played a game of super mario brothers 3. If my linux machine was self aware, it would probably seriously question the point in emulating 8bit hardware on it's 64bit platform. As in, "seriously dude? WTF are you doing? I'm basically idling doing this, you know that right?" lol

OS/2 ran well on SOME IBM equipment. I remember it only being stable on the microchannel machines at one time - and we had one microchannel "close" that it worked well on. IIRC it was one out of 5 supposedly identical boards - - -

It actually had a "better Windows than Windows," just as it had a "better DOS than DOS."

If you had the versions of OS/2 that included Windows 3, you got a Windows compiled with the Watcom compiler, which was much better than the Microsoft one. The result was faster and had fewer problems.

OS/2 was also much better than Windows 3 at allocating and sharing resources, so Windows apps did indeed run better on OS/2 than on Windows/MS DOS.

In fact, many people feel that it was OS/2's superb support for DOS and Windows apps that kept developers from writing for OS/2 or porting their apps to it. Why create an OS/2 version when you can just create a Windows version and hit both targets?

The situation was different with Win '9x because IBM didn't have the rights to the code for that, and OS/2 didn't support the full Win32 API.

However, Win '9x was not a very good OS and OS/2 was superior both technically and in use. What Win '9x _did_ have was far more marketing and sales efforts, as well as Microsoft's under-the-covers deals with the PC OEMs. It also had more developers writing for it, but that was almost a side effect of the other things.

I knew quite a few people who ran boards. Other than one guy who ran his board on a Commodore 64, they used either Desqview or OS/2.

One of them was quite large and was PCBoard on OS/2 with multiple nodes and quite a few phone lines. I don't remember the details, but he actually had a separate building for the board, and connected it to his house with thin net. (He ran the thin net through a garden hose and buried it so it wasn't visible.)

He also had nice computer desks and computers connected to the network for each of his kids and for his wife. It was the first time I had seen anyone with a LAN in their house. :)

He didn't survive the transition to the Internet though. He thought that he could provide some Internet services through PCBoard and keep all of his subscribers. I told him repeatedly that people would just want a SLIP or PPP connection so that they were more directly connected.

He was sort of right in that AOL did much what he was doing, but was much more successful at it. However, ISPs offering dialup probably grabbed the majority of his customers, since BBS users were mostly computer hobbyists, and they liked the less-controlled experience of being a part of the net and being able to choose what client software they used for various services, etc.

I've played some of the old Apogee Commander Keen games in dosbox, and I also tried out a few games with MAME. It was kind of cool seeing Donkey Kong and Centipede again, but you really need a joystick to play those arcade games and I'm not that into games that I'd buy a good joystick and set things up.

I played a lot of pinball as a teenager and when I was in college, and played some of the arcade video games, but still preferred pinball. When I started using personal computers, I never really got into games; there were always too many other interesting things to do with a computer. :)

I had/still have? the regged versions. Spent a few weekends writing saved game editors for them and Duke Nukem. Prior to the 3d editions.

Same.

Same here. :) Once I learned how to code initially, it opened a whole new world for me. The computer wasn't in control, I was. [g]

I still use a genuine IBM PS/2 keyboard, connected via a USB adapter.

A company in Kentucky still makes this type of mechanical keyboard, available with USB or PS/2 interface:

Nice keyboard - at $115 US

hmm, mine was in the 80s.

note they are not identical to the original model M's that came with the IBM PC, but they are close enough that i can type like a monster once again (after many years of typing on keyboards that had no depth or touch to them).

the original keyboard was metal and weighed quite a bit. when i gave the PC away in '96 i regret giving that keyboard away. this one is a plastic case (and creaks when i move it).

songbird

I loke my Rocketfish BT keyboard. It doesn't click but has a reasonable feel to it. My favourite years ago was the Keytronics KT104

Oh yes, the clicky clack keyboards. Heavy bastards too. You could knock somebody out if you hit them upside the head with one and it wouldn't hurt the keyboard. [g]

They still have the old full-size cases available, but they also have a smaller case that's roughly the same size as most modern keyboards are. I think the new case is not quite as sturdy as the old one, but they're still fairly heavy and quite sturdy.

I prefer a keyboard with some weight to it so it doesn't move around on my desk.

I have a couple of the Unicomp keyboards and am really happy with them. Not quite as nice to type on IMO, but still quite good, is a keyboard with Cherry MX switches (Blue or Brown are good).

I have quite a few servers running on Ubuntu 16.04, which is what Mint

I have various things that I want a computer to do for me, and I'd rather that it do them with the minimum of muss and fuss. I don't want my desktop environment to change radically every few years like it does with Windows, KDE, or Gnome. That means that I also avoid distros like Arch or Fedora. I got my fill of constantly fiddling around with the OS

I'm sure that some day someone will come up with a new paradigm for a desktop GUI that will be a major improvement over what I'm using now, but so far I haven't seen anything that's truly better - just different. (I did think that Sun's Project Looking Glass had some very useful features, but I think it was ahead of its time since the graphics chipsets at the time weren't really adequate to do 3D with good performance.)

Bud Frede wrote: ...

i've been happy with using Debian with the MATE desktop (for this older machine it's about all it can do well other than even more basic window managers).

once they get direct wiring to the brain figured out the whole game changes completely. i expect i will opt- out of that interface (seeing how bugs and hackers are still a feature of the landscape and i don't expect that to change).

anytime you are into graphics to a significant extent you are talking memory/processor power, but the onboard graphics in the CPUs has been coming along pretty well.

songbird

I think we can safely conclude that graphics performance on modern hardware is far more competent than was available at the time Project Looking Glass was current. That was kind of the point that I was making...

Excellent. However, the fact 18.1 exists and 18.2 is just around the corner indicates to me atleast, it's not as mature as 17.3, just yet. So, I'll continue waiting for a bit longer. I also have 17.3 running various servers for me, and, I prefer stability over 'new' features that are already being changed to 'improve' them further.

Same here.

Which desktop are you running on 18.1?