I was bored, so I decided to install OS/2 Warp 3 ((The totally cool way to run your computer.)). I got the Danish version, even.
Here’s the first screen you see (after you switch from the installation floppy to floppy 1 – while OS/2 Warp 3 came on a CD, it could not boot from it as that was the norm in the day – you could also make, I think around 80, installation floppies from the CD):
1994. The year before Windows 95…
Selection of display driver (which has been IBM-Danishified to “skærmstyreprogrammer” or screen control programs):
So, do I use CGA or EGA…? No, I go with the new-fangled VGA which has an amazing resolution of 640*480 pixels in 16 colors! (or 320*200 pixels in 256 colors – 320*240 if you know how to put the screen into mode-X).
I also installed a PS/2 pointing device. Remember those?
Installation is a snap. That’s not how I remember installing OS/2 2.1 from 19 floppies + 21 floppies for drivers:
Lookit that pretty colorful progress bar…
What you see after you dismiss the horrible introduction rendered in 16 colors:
Aah, the Workplace Shell (WPS). A truly object oriented shell. With the new Launchpad ((I believe it was called the LaunchPad…)) at the bottom, a new feature in version 3.
Here’s a video playing while doing other things at the same time! Warp shipped with the multimedia extensions and could be convinced to play sound and (crappy) video!
The command interpreter in OS/2 was pretty neat ((You can see it is different from DOS as it has brackets around the prompt and the bar at the top is blue instead of red.)), but like all the cool kids, I was of course running the 4OS2 replacement. You could use long file names, but unlike in Windows 95, this meant that DOS/Windows programs could not access them, and unless you like Lotus Smartsuite a lot, that meant most of your programs, so you didn’t. Except to show off.
I had the blue spine version, so I had WIN-OS/2 built right in. Paintbrush ((Before being renamed to just Paint.)), Adobe Type Manager (who remembers that?) and OS/2 solitaire running side-by-side:
The WIN-OS/2 programs started much faster on my virtual machine that I remember them doing back in the day. The fact I allowed it to use 128 MB RAM instead of the 4 MB and later 8 MB RAM I had back in the day may have a saying in that. You could, by the way, get StarOffice for OS/2. That is the office suite which subsequently became OpenOffice.org and now LibreOffice ((Or something retarded like that.)).
I still remember playing Rise of the Triad on my puny 486 with 4 MB of RAM under OS/2 even though the game required 8 MB of RAM as OS/2 had this new-fangled virtual memory, which is just like memory except slower.
Installing Win32s, you could even run several Windows 95 applications (though fewer and fewer new applications as time progressed). I switched away from OS/2 at the end of 1997. By that time I had modded the living shit out of OS/2 with an X-server, Netscape, Java, and other things that were the bomb back then. I think that I at the time was dual booting OS/2 Warp 3 and SCO OpenServer 5.0.2 (later upgraded to 5.0.4). I then went on to play with SLS Linux and the fancy new Windows 98 beta I got a hold of.
I never did get around to playing much with OS/2 Warp 4 (which had this fancy internet-thing in it) or eComStation. Here’s the boot picture from the “new” eComStation free live CD demo (the OS/2 Warp 3 header is just because I’m running the live CD in the same virtual machine as the one I used for installing OS/2 except with more memory for the RAM disk):
And here’s the desktop. Colorful, with internet built right in, virtual desktops, Flash player 5. The loads:
And will you look at that screen resolution ((To be frank, I am quite certain I managed to get my Warp 3 running at something like this as well.))!
Starting Firefox brings up this:
Though, this may be due to virtualization as OS/2 was using features of the Intel processors that no other operations system ever has.
To end on a higher note, here’s one of the advertisements for OS/2 Warp 3 from back in the day:
