July 1, 2005 - 10:55 A.M.
OS/2 in the news, perhaps for the last time?
- IT TOPICS:Government & Regulation, Linux & Unix, Operating Systems
The Microsoft/IBM antitrust settlement will thrust OS/2 -- the operating system Microsoft trounced with monopolistic behavior and IBM abandoned -- into the news for a few days. To the casual observer, OS/2 certainly seems dead, or at least relegated to "cult classic." And yet... Mark Willoughby's recent column ("OS/2 loyalists remain as the operating system fades away") notes some glimmers of life:
- A new cadre of younger OS/2 users in Europe, particularly in Germany, has started a small OS/2 renaissance as an alternative to Microsoft.
- OS/2 aficionados have been gathering annually in the U.S. since 1997 at Warpstock.... Europe quickly added its own edition of Warpstock.
- Sun Microsystems sees gold in the stranded OS/2 community, which it numbers at 20 million users. The company has unveiled Project Mad Hatter to sell Linux desktops to OS/2 users.
Ahhh, but there's the rub. Linux has the backing of the digerati (not to mention IBM and Red Hat) as the anti-Microsoft OS of choice. (And Apple is making some headway in the enterprise, Mark Hall says.) OS/2, for all of its merits, doesn't have that buzz factor going for it.
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