On 14 July 2016 at 22:51, Jerry Kemp <ot...@oryx.us> wrote: > > I'm missing something here. Although most did/are using the Apple supplied > GUI/Aqua, it wasn't a requirement. > > I have/run OpenWindows (compiled for OS X/PPC), and also, although mostly > for fun, have a copy of the Mosaic web browser, also compiled for OS X/PPC. > > Aside from the Netinfo directory server, from a basic level, you can pretty > much do & run anything you would on Solaris, Unix, *BSD or Lunix. What OS X > didn't ship with wasn't too hard to compile on my own.
*Blink* Really? I did not think it was possible to boot OS X in multiuser mode _without_ loading Aqua and the desktop. Am I wrong? Darwin, maybe, but AFAIK Darwin isn't maintained any more, is it? > In defense of OS/2, I went from straight DOS to OS/2 1.3. I was taking a > lot of college programming classes, and in Assembly language specifically, I > found any number of ways to blow things up and loose my work. OS/2 truly > provided a "better DOS than DOS", and I could blow up a DOS session with my > Assembly code and go right on working. Interesting. I didn't do much programming on OS/2, more on plain old DOS, but I could readily crash my OS/2 2 home PC with Fractint. Its fancy video modes could instantly cause OS/2 to throw an exception and halt. > Applications are/were a long story on OS/2, that I could write volumes on, > but in short, if you wanted to play games, DOS and later, Windows was the > place to be. Or the more 2000+ updated answer, on a game console. Hmmm. I take your point. I was never a gamer and Win3 apps ran great on OS/2 2, IME. > OTOH, how many word processors/spreadsheets/presentation programs does one > need per OS? :-) Variety is the spice of life? > From a technical perspective, the only big problem I had with OS/2, back in > the 1990's, was the single thread input queue on the new OOUI, WPS (Work > Place Shell). Indeed. And honestly WPS was really not all that as a shell. I place it down there with Amiga Intuition in its clunkiness. Classic MacOS, OS X and Win9x were all slicker and more capable IMHO. > OS/2 is now sold under the name "eComStation" and boots from JFS2 volumes. Indeed. I've tried it. It's just as much of a PITA to install as it was 20y ago. :-( > In summary, back in the early 1990's, I moved to OS/2. I didn't do it to > get some application I needed, I moved for stability in the Wintel world. > And for me, it did a great job. I went from OS/2 2 to the beta of Win95, and then, later, to NT 4. At work, I used NT 3 -- for me, 3.51 was a classic version. No fancy UI but solid and capable. By modern standards, fast, too. -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) • +420 702 829 053 (ČR)