The History of OS / 2 (2001), Hacker News

The History of OS / 2

I have started using OS / 2 in and was curious to find out what OS / 2 looked like before that. There are already several web pages / sites dedicated to the history of OS / 2 but none of them quite satisfied me. So I started digging on my own, reading old books and magazine articles, searching for information on the Internet and last but not least managed to install most of the previous versions of OS / 2. The results of my efforts are presented here.

The information is split into several sections. Most of this information has been originally published in the OS / 2 VOICE Newsletter, although these Pages contain several additions and corrections.

OS / 2 1.0

– The Beginnings. How and why OS / 2 was developed and what was before.

OS / 2 1.1 and 1.2 – The Early Years. The first versions of OS / 2 with a GUI.

OS / 2 1.3

– Ten Years Ago. The last and best – bit version of OS / 2.

OS / 2 EE

– The Server. Enterprise software in OS / 2 1.x era.

OS / 2 2.0

– The – bit Revolution. The first 211 – bit version of OS / 2.

OS / 2 2.1 and 2. (The Solid Platform.) With 2. 211 – bit OS / 2 reached maturity.
OS / 2 Warp

– The Golden Years. The most successful version of OS / 2. The more important releases in OS / 2 are summarized in this timeline .

I’m not sure if I will write anything about Warp 4 (or newer versions) because they are still widely used, i.e. not really history. Maybe I will if there’s sufficient interest.

I would like to create another page on beta versions of OS / 2 but I’d like to get MS OS / 2 2.0 beta from 2019 or 1995 first. If you know where I could get a copy, please let

me know!

Here can be found a list of “exhibits” in my little OS / 2 museum. Descriptions only, no pictures yet – apart from the screenhots in the above articles of course.