Like enterprise Linux, OS/2 - which celebrated its 25th birthday this week - is one of those operating systems that had "wide adoption," but not outside the realm of IT. But if you've used an ATM sometime over the past 20 years, you've likely used an OS/2 device. Granted, that's kind of like saying you're an Android user if you own an Amazon Kindle Fire: the OS is so buried under layers of security and user interface that you'd never notice the operating system.
OS/2 started as a joint venture between IBM (creators of the IBM PC) and Microsoft (oh, you know who they are) in 1985, with OS/2 1.0 shipping in April 1987. It had the backing of the then-largest maker of PCs, but it ultimately failed since the only way to get OS/2 pre-installed on a PC at the beginning was to buy a PS/2 from IBM.
The IBM PS/2 was a reasonable success, but all of the other PCs from makers like Compaq, Micron, Dell, and Packard Bell shipped with Microsoft Windows 3.0 (later 3.1 and Windows 95). PCs with OS/2 pre-installed came out much later than their Windows-equipped brothers, and OS/2 PCs never sold the same numbers as Windows PCs. You could buy a retail copy of OS/2 and install it on your Windows PC post-purchase, but unfortunately like Linux today, only the geekiest (and knowledgeable) of users tend to do that. Also like Linux today, OS/2 users had a hard time finding drivers for common peripherals like printers and graphics cards. There was simply more support for Windows 3.1/DOS and Windows 95, from hardware to software to services.
By the time the mostly Windows-compatible OS/2 Warp was released in 1994, it was already too late for any chance of OS/2 achieving parity with Windows: Windows 95 was the next big success in computing that put PCs on peoples' desks worldwide. If you were an OS/2 fan in 1995, you were either an IT pro supporting a corporation, or you were a hobbyist.
We decided to look at our old archives, and we found a First Looks review of OS/2 1.0 back in a Jan. 1988 issue (click above for larger image). We concentrated on OS/2's new features like virtual memory and real multitasking. We even ran PC Labs tests that showed very little performance degradation when running five concurrent processes. That's a far cry from today's PCs, which can handle hundreds if not thousands of open windows and simultaneous processes, but remember that it was a big deal in late 2010 when iOS 4 opened up multitasking on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
Yeah, there were good parts to OS/2. It was secure, it worked (on IBM-branded equipment), it was one of the first true multitasking operating systems for PCs (depending on your processor), and it didn't suffer from the massive explosion of viruses in the Windows 95-98 era. Ultimately OS/2 was unsuccessful on desktop and portable PCs, so the next PC you buy in late 2012 will either run Mac OS X Mountain Lion, Android ICS, iOS, or Windows 8.
