ArcaOS - A Modern Version of IBM’s OS/2 (Overview & Demo)

You might think OS/2 is long gone, but it still lingers around in more places then you'd expect. Today's video covers ArcaOS, an OS/2-based operating system designed to work with newer hardware!
ArcaOS: www.arcanoae.com/arcaos/
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#MichaelMJD #ArcaOS #OS2

[@MichaelMJD]

This video was removed because of a copyright strike that has now been resolved. See here for details: twitter.com/mjdtweets/status/1621268945876537345 I would recommend reading this Twitter thread if you are considering purchasing ArcaOS. If you want my personal recommendation, I would not purchase this. A strange side effect is that the strike somehow caused most of the comments to be removed. UPDATE: The comments seem to slowly be coming back.

[@dalessandrokiko8324]

Everything will be fine

[@eriksiers]

...yeah, just confirms that I don't really need to give them my money.

[@OscarTiderman]

The tweet is gone?

[@eriksiers]

@@OscarTiderman Works for me.

[@rob19632]

I think I still have os2 in the attic

[@gregkelly2145]

Wow, what a blast from the past. My first IT job was being subbed out to a bank that was running OS/2 almost exclusively. The only reason I got the job was because I helped a friend in college install Warp/3 for a business school project. I worked in that environment for 7 years and when the contract was finally ended, I applied to a job at an industrial size mail order pharmacy. Everything in the interview was going great until we walked out on the production floor and while I was there, THE largest automated system there crashed. It was running OS/2 Warp 3 on its control system (facepalm) and had been crashing regularly every few hours and the manufacturer couldn't figure out why. I told my future boss that I had a lot of experience with OS/2 and I would be glad to look at it. He said sure, so my first thing to look at was its Fixpack level. If my memory serves Fixpack 42 (think Windows service packs for reference) was the latest. The machine had never been Fixpacked at all and was totally mint from 1994 and it was 2001. When I saw this, I did my best mechanic "well there's your problem..." I was called by HR that afternoon and hired immediately. The very first job I had when I started was to clone the existing drive and Fixpack it to current. After that the machine was rock solid for years. I then had to travel to every other location and upgrade their machines as well as train the manufacturer how to do it as their "OS/2 expert" had quit a year prior.

[@jamescostello6529]

I worked for Decision One and we supported BofA and their OS2 systems. They were easy piezy. Fix something, run the install disks, select the role and it loaded from the servers. The in house servers were also OS2.

[@tessjdt]

My first job was with a major entertainment company that used OS/2 to run its warehouse operations (WMS). My two biggest projects were upgrading from OS/2 Warp 3 to Warp 4 / eBusiness and implementing Workspace on Demand used to manage and boot OS/2 desktops over a network on diskless workstations. I loved how OS/2 domains worked by having configurations such as Applications, Network shares, and other user networkable items at the domain level and used the same object approach in WPS to manage objects in the domain. Want an office have two network shares from server A and server B along with a printer and Lotus? Just drag and drop those items in the domain on top of the department group and have them refresh/reboot and there they are! Want to change networe share from server A to server B? Just update the configuration in the domain and change the server and have the user refresh. Administration was pretty easy. NOTE: Bill Gates wasn't wrong. OS/2 still exist today in the form of "NT" which powers all of Microsoft modern operating systems. Up until (Windows 2012?) NT even supported OS/2 2.0 command line applications. You could run os2.exe and have an os2 command line.

[@AshenTechDotCom]

i got hired like that when i was doing a delivery for a buddy when he got hit by a car that ran a red light.. saw a system running NT 4 that kept rebooting itself, not crashing but full "rebooting" reboots.... it was unpatched pre-release nt4... the last RC but..yeah... i had my back of disks and comp stuff on me "want me to fix this for you?" "you sure you can?"... took like 45min to install the latest fully patched copy i had on a cd onto the system, upgrading the build that was on there to full retail with all patches... turned out one of the apps had been updated and, every time it tried to run a set command, it was triggering a crash of some service that caused windows to reboot..... bizzarre but.. yeah.. i got hired and i was handed 750usd and a stack of gift cards by the owners wife after she saw it was up and running and noticed... i seemed to know what i was doing and was messing with the control software... i had talked to the operator and, checked the manual when the thing was updating, to find how to set it to just jump to the next job file/stage without manual interaction... and set it so that a whole job would just auto complete no need to have somebody tell it to start the next stage each time, instead operator watches the cuts and if anything dosnt fall out... tap with hammer to release so the cutting head dosnt smack into it on the next pass... i was asked if i was trained cnc tech or what.. "naa, higschool dropout who spent most of highschool repairing and maintaining the schools computers because, the district computer guy was worse then useless.. real tool who could barely use his favorite type of computer, a mac... the owner was so happy though, he had me update 3 other similar machines the same way, after confirming it would work i updated them all to windows 2000 pro, that actually worked better with the hardware in those systems, since there were proper 2k drivers for the video chip for example... not hacky sort-of-working (24bit mode worked but..looked the same as 16bit for example..) 2k.32bit worked great at the build in screens full 1024x768 native/optimal resolution.. anyway.. when i told my buddy i would see him at work the next day.. he was confused.. more so when i showed up with my computer shit and caught a ride with him... when the bosses wife told the story, im told she made it sound like i was some hero or legend that came in and saved them... the woman can be dramatic... owner laughed when somebody in the dept he hired me to work with, not for but with, was very upset a hs droppout with no college degree was hired to do tech work, even more so when he later broke into locked files and found i was making nearly 2x what he was.... was he shocked when he got demoted and nearly fired after confronting the boss at a meeting about it? best part of that, the rest of the people who heard, just congratulated me and told me i earned it... i was always checking for problems and fixing htem before they became a major issue, even swapping desktops before they needed re-imaged just to avoid the person having any down time, then let the grunt(a-hole college boy) wipe and re-image the system... since, honestly despite all his degrees, he was about as useful as teats on a bull..... huge ego no exp at all... i do miss that job though... hell i miss being able to work..

[@frederick2195]

That's the good ol days. My dad was the IT for gte through Verizon. When gte started putting the phone systems to digital they basically brought everyone into a room and asked if anyone knew how to use windows 3.1. And that was that. In the late 90's early 00's comp tia a+ became a thing. They had to send him to school to get certified to keep his job even though he had been doing the job for 10 years already😂 but then they got him dell certified too and has lifetime discounts now.

[@Sohailali1]

You better be friends with that college friend. He made your career with his problem.

[@bulldogcraft]

As a developer os/2 was amazing compared to windows for workgroups and totally changed my development. When I screwed up a null pointer in c++ I never had to reboot anymore. The process crashed, not the entire OS. I was sad to see it disappear...

[@brahmoone]

but so are linux/unix/winNT

[@bulldogcraft]

@@brahmoone Linux wasn't out until 1991, BSD in 1992 and NT wasn't out until 1993. Unix was just crazy expensive. OS/2 was way ahead of it's time, as well as the hardware available so the new user experience was poor. It got better in 1992 when OS/2 2.0 was released when the hardware was catching up to the software.

[@James_Knott]

Back in 1995, I was taking a C programming course at a local college. We used Borland Turbo C++ on Windows 3.1 in class, but I had Borland C++ on OS/2 at home. One "fun" thing I came across was the difference in integers, between 32 bit Borland C++ and 16 bit Turbo C++. I'd have my program running great at home, only to have it crap out in class because it could no longer handle intergers exceeding what Turbo C++ supported. I was running OS/2 at home until about 20 years ago, when I switched to Linux. I still have some unopened boxes of OS/2 here.

[@elkiebeerepoot5829]

@@bulldogcraft Yes, but both Linux and BSD were in their baby shoes. Unix was used by universities. OS/2 was used by some of the buyers of IBM desktops. I loved to use OS/2 in these days. My user experience was fine. But it's now over and out. I use both Windows and Linux. I prefer Linux.

[@andresbravo2003]

OS/2 Warp’s legacy continues on thanks to many users who wanted to run on modern computers to this day. This OS is highly up to date.

[@fungames24]

Looks as updated as windows 3.1.

[@thewiirocks]

@@fungames24 For shame! It's obviously competitive with Windows 95 (That Klondike background is the most 90s thing ever)

[@EvilTurkeySlices]

Would this run on my Pentium 200 Packard Bell?

[@fungames24]

@@EvilTurkeySlices That's over powered. My Samsung Q1 with intel Axx chip you never heard of runs XP, and windows 2003 fine.

[@EvilTurkeySlices]

@@fungames24 what does that have to do with anything? I asked if my Pentium 200mhz Packard Bell can run ArcaOS.

[@kognitro]

I remember buying a magazine offering a free copy of os/2 warp. It had a big caption talking about Windows compatibility. I ended up installing it on my PC out of curiosity. Can't remember the year 1995 maybe. I was quite impressed, especially with its multitasking. Windows couldn't even copy to a floppy and do other activities at the same time. os/2 could do that easily and more with ease, and was generally faster. It did have the Windows compatibility that was promised. I think driver problems ultimately forced me back to Windows. I've always wished it gained traction. Cool to see people are still trying to do things with it.

[@ralfvandeven3155]

OS/2 failed on a marketing level. Media kept comparing what Microsoft promised windows 95 would do to what OS/2 actually did. So windows was constantly declared the superior OS. By the time windows 95 actually got to market OS/2 had already lost despite being the far superior OS on a technical level. Another huge failure of IBM was setting the system specs too low as far as required ram was concerned. This led to OS/2 being installed on machines that could barely handle the OS let alone an application leading to bad user experiences and people complaining OS/2 was slow. Had IBM just required 8MB ram it would have been avoided... -- ps. feels weird to talking about machines having less than 4MB ram in 2023

[@VarionJimmy]

Exactly my experience too! Remember that I thought it looked so good and I was a bit disappointed when Windows took over and OS/2 got no attention…

[@generallyunimportant]

ah yes, hardware compatibility, the one thing that forces everyone back onto windows. my experience with that was mostly under linux, with my bad laptop with a realtek card that wasn't compatible so it isn't really worth mentioning here.

[@RandomFandomOfficial]

Windows was a mistake 😂😅

[@AlienPsyTing1]

I got that and the first thing I did after installing it was to open a DOS box, type WIN, and WINDOWS ran then I went into another DOS box and ran windows again and it did it - amazing, shame they didn't save it by making it open source

[@dennisdoherty1133]

OS/2 was fantastic back in the day. I still have a couple retro builds that I have 3.0 running on for the occasional nostalgia trip.

[@tolkienfan1972]

That's awesome. Fond memories

[@tradde11]

I ran a 2 line BBS on it. Windows did not multitask well at all back then. OS/2 did. I was very happy with it.

[@TrueThanny]

@@tradde11 I also ran a BBS under OS/2 for a while. By the time I pulled the plug, I had two physical lines and half a dozen virtual lines accessible on the internet (using Ray Gwinn's SIO drivers with vmodem functionality). Fantastic OS for that purpose.

[@tradde11]

@@TrueThanny Yes, it was great for that. I too used Vmodem to allow callers to dial out on my 2nd line to the very new Internet. I really enjoyed the BBS days but knew they were coming to an end or a serious change.

[@FernandoMackert]

OS/Warp was Banco do Brasil's operating system back in 1999 when I started working there. It lasted until mid 2000s when it was replaced with a custom version of Linux. OS2/Warp was like an older but prettier version of Windows that never crashed.

[@robertleeluben]

I remember getting to play with a OS2 machine at my job, when no one was looking I loaded wing commander and played it in a window and was blown away by how well it ran. This was in '94 so win3.1 was still normal and OS2 felt like a whole different world compared to it.

[@zdanee]

My first PC I bought when I was 12 came with OS/2 2.0, it was a secondhand IBM PS/2 sx56 with a 386sx and 10MB of RAM, got it on a garage sale, apparently it came from a police station in my city. It also had Win 3.1 installed into the dosbox so I had best of both worlds. I actually still have it, it still boots just fine.

[@tolkienfan1972]

I'd open it up an see if there is a battery on the motherboard... If there is they are notorious for leaking and destroying tracks and components. Other than that capacitors can get old, but are easily replaced. It should last

[@pf100andahalf]

I bought OS/2 from a retailer named Egghead in Atlanta in 1989. After using it for a while at my business I needed tech support and contacted IBM. This must have been just as things were falling apart with Microsoft and they told me I wasn't allowed to have OS/2 and to return it for a refund which I did. Wow, that was a short story.

[@mc10guru]

Ahoy, Thanks for the interesting video. I'm a retired Certified OS/2 Warpserver tech. I worked for HP as a tech until 2006 performing maintenance on installations: mostly investment firms (transaction servers), banks (ATMs) and food stores (inventory control). I also used eComStation (Warp 4.52) at home until the WWW began to break in eCS in 2008. When upgrades to email protocols broke my email in Mozilla Suite I gave up. I can still boot eCS on a Dell C700 and an IBM desktop. I had a Thinkpad T42 running it until the hard drive froze in 2016. I used Odin (similar to Wine) to run Win32 programs like Wordpad and Textpad32. I've been thinking to get ArcaOS but keep talking myself out of it. Maybe it's time now. I've got a Promethian ActiveConnect mini PC just waiting for an OS! Thanks again, daveyb

[@DevanSabaratnam]

Oh wow - memories... I remember running a BBS back in the 80's with multiple 33K modems hooked up to a PC running OS/2. Still have my OS/2 Warp install disks in storage here somewhere.

[@DarkVeilGaming]

YESSSSS I love this!! I've been following ArcaOS for a while now and wanted to see more info on it but never could because there's no trial iso :( Great to see

[@NoahClevinger]

I can't wait to see what other videos you have in store for us this year, Michael!

[@joeslinky]

Any time Michael releases a video it is a good day.

[@SunIsLost]

Yes.

[@JustPyroYT]

Yes

[@GardenData61371]

Yesn't

[@screwtewb]

The GUI is 👍 Polished for the modern age, yet still delightfully utilitarian and retro.

[@johnangelico667]

Hi and thanks for the nostalgia Michael. I changed from Win 3.x to OS/2 back in the 90s, when I was selling and supporting a Windows VB based accounting program. When I changed to OS/2 and Win-OS2, I found it harder to resolve my clients' support issues because under OS/2 I could not reproduce their problem. It was a weird proof that OS/2 was running Windows better than in native mode on client machines 🙂

[@waviation9]

OS/2 was the greatest OS that literally nobody knew about.

[@FlyboyHelosim]

@@GardenData61371 There's always one... 🙄

[@drygnfyre]

It had a very powerful GUI for its time. The "template" motif was later adopted (in a modified form) by macOS. I remember using it once and it was pretty crazy how literally every on-screen element could be modified. Colors, fonts, and so on. Compared to more rigid contemporary GUIs, it was pretty impressive what could be done with it.

[@waviation9]

@@drygnfyre I've used it in a VM once and it was amazing. Truly ahead of its time.

[@stevenjlovelace]

I'd love to see more WordPerfect and other vintage productivity software. As you discovered, the now-ubiquitous keyboard shortcuts don't work the same, so there's a lot of interesting differences you could document.

[@eric_d]

WordPerfect always had its own shortcut keys using the F keys and modifiers (shift/alt/ctrl). It seems, at least in this version, that all CTRL-letter combinations were for programmable macros. I _THINK_ All versions of WordPerfect were like that, but I haven't used it personally in over 20 years. In a way, things were so much better back then. You just needed to either memorize all the F key commands, or get one of those templates that went on your keyboard. F keys aren't used nearly enough in most modern software. They're even selling keyboards these days with the F keys removed altogether! That's just plain silly!

[@stephencox4224]

Internet archive has copies of OS2 software which these days is abandonware including Wordperfect and other productivity software is floating around the net, I run ArcaOs 5.04 currently and have used Warp 3 Warp 4 and Warp 4.5 in the past, Rock solid and awesome Dos compatability allowing each Dos program to use whatever it needs such as XMS or EMM memory whereas under Dos you had to use different config.sys for such shennanagins and have a boot menu requiring a reboot for either high memory system required OS2 just does it perfectly without a reboot, Nothing since has come close except maybe Virtualisation software running under a very powerful modern system.

[@kjetilv]

Great video as always 👍🏻 Fun to see these legacy things run on old hardware

[@teknowil]

i mean the laptop is 15 years old or older how could it not be vintage?

[@TheSimoc]

@NRGY But the even sadder side is that modern bloated browsers don't work on a few years too old computers or operating system versions, and even the content-wise simplest major websites today require the (almost) latest browser to work, in most cases completely unnecessarily.

[@OCTAGRAM]

@@TheSimoc I will miss WebAssembly, destructors, weak references and weak maps in older browsers. Weak stuff should have been introduced long ago. Why wait until, let me recall, Firefox 88? Until 2021 And lack of WebSockets and CORS would be notable limitation. I would say that advanced development involves WebRTC. This is kind of UDP for web, sometimes literally UDP, and UDP programming is advanced one. But WebSockets, CORS and weak stuff is basic. It just took too long to get into language.

[@yacobgugsa2524]

0:53 Here in Vancouver, SkyTrain's automated block signalling system used OS/2 until about ten years ago. Alcatel's Selnet SMC (later acquired by Thales) was hosted on IBM 7588 industrial computers and used 3.5" floppy disks. This was replaced by NetTrac running Windows XP, and once the new SkyTrain control centre opens in a few years, NetTrac will be replaced by SelTrac CBTC. Both NetTrac and SelTrac are Thales systems. Compass Card readers also run on Windows Mobile 6.5(!)

[@kognitro]

Thats really interesting. Well if it ain't broke don't fix it I guess. You don't think about these ancient systems running still in the modern world. It makes sense though, the economics and risks associated with modernizing don't always make sense.

[@johndododoe1411]

I updated some Windows Mobile code in our product the day this video was released, so the CE OS family is alive for me, but I haven't handled OS/2 code since before 2010, even though I was vaguely aware of eComStation.

[@cybernit3]

I live near Vancouver too... Ya I thought the skytrains were run by Commodore vic20 or C64...oh didn't know they used Os/2 Warp. I never thought too much about os/2 back in the early 90s, Windows dominated and went on from there. I still think the AmigaOS was something back then, had a bad rep for being unstable since it had no MMU, but later on it became more stable.

[@I.____.....__...__]

- 17:03 It's trying to open the Ctrl+A macro file (ctrla.wcm). There isn't a shortcut key for select-all by default; you have to set one up in the settings. (Time-travelers would have a lot of difficulty fitting into the past in many ways.) - 24:30 Hotdog-stand color-scheme or bust!

[@JoBot__]

Huh... I think I'll leave my comments in this format from now on. 🤔

[@agh0x01]

Hotdog Stand was always what I would pick to prank friends/colleagues.

[@IrishCarney]

Thank you so so much for NOT stretching a 4:3 aspect ratio screen to "fill up" a 16:9 widescreen! When you had computer screenshots to show, you just let them stay in their original aspect ratio and used pillarboxing on the sides. Again, THANK YOU. I can't tell you how many times I've had to suffer through horrible distorted stretched footage in other videos. Extra kudos to you also because while it might be simple to just keep it at pillarboxed 4:3 for an entire video, you kept switching back and forth from non-screenshot widescreen with no problems.

[@egmccann]

Man. I miss OS/2. It was great back in the day. Pity IBM didn't know what to do with it or the home market (or, for that matter, how not to have internal departments sabotage each other.) It *still* does some things Windows doesn't. And Object Desktop back then was... useful. I was sad to see it die off (even despite eComStation.)

[@greenpulp.]

Object Desktop was great!

[@DrivingSander1970]

I used OS/2 2.1 in the 90ties for about 5 years and really enjoyed it. Was ahead of it's time compared to Windows NT 4.0 as its closest competitor.

[@BWGPEI]

I ran OS/2 back in the day, and liked it a lot. Thanks!

[@chrisretusn]

I logged in just to like this video. Used OS/2 exclusively for many years, from 2.1 to eComStation 1.1. A trip down memory lane.

[@robbybobbyhobbies]

I was a big fan of OS/2 back in the day, to the extent that IBM UK contacted me to contribute to a testimonial video for some sort of ad campaign. As a painfully introverted nerd I declined the invitation (I think I would have had an all-expenses paid trip to Bracknell or whichever dismal town IBM operated out of back then) and shortly after I switched to NT. But at the time the OS and interface seemed like the future.

[@apreviousseagle836]

Ouch. Having worked for a company that essentially sent me on fully paid mini vacations for over 7 years, I would have jumped on that offer like a flea on a dog.

[@Blaster_Unity_UB]

Hello fellow computer users/nerds!

[@JustPyroYT]

Hi

[@raikitsunagi]

Greetings!

[@ninethetwotailedfox]

Hi

[@phantaski]

h.

[@O5-XIV]

Suuuup

[@tolkienfan1972]

I spent a LOT of time using qnd developing on OS/2. It was far ahead of other PC OSes. I loved it

[@Datan0de]

I was a fanatical OS/2 fan back in the day. Subscribed to a couple of the journals, ran it at home, and even named my cats Merlin (after the code name for Warp 4) and APAR (IBM's internal shorthand for a software bug report). Needless to say, I liked it, though my two big complaints were lack of 3rd party driver support (IBM's techs were very helpful in that regard) and the dizzying list of configuration options when running DOS or Windows apps. We had one OS/2 server at work, and if it acted up I was the person they called. It was sad to see OS/2 wither and die. I'd really love to see how the world would've turned out differently if Microsoft hadn't jumped ship in favor of developing Windows 95.

[@punboleh7081]

Oh, yes. Let's play it again and this time we choose the path where OS/2 wins?

[@e2e4au]

OS/2 was amazing for its time - I used it for several years and loved it !!

[@LichaelMewis]

I learned OS/2 in the late 80s and early 90s. I loved that OS. Then that morphed into Windows NT which I do lots of work on today which is called windows server today. I actually wrote a time clock program in Visual Basic for OS/2 back in the day. It was the first real job I ever had. I was still 17 years old. It would ring a physical buzzer every certain amount of time throughout the facility. I actually started on MSDOS 3.11 and wildcat bbs in the very beginning when I was only 12 years old. I ran my own bbs and was featured in the newspaper back in the late 80s.

[@GeomancerHT]

You know it's an obscure OS when the presentation is on a unknown hotel to 4 people or less XD

[@nickwallette6201]

Uh huh. When the launch party is a potluck.

[@katrinabryce]

ctrla.wcm is a custom macro that you could right, save to that name, and run everytime you press control-A. That wasn't a missing file.

[@tylerdean980]

I always love looking at operating systems

[@kbhasi]

(1:54) So, from what I can tell, ArcaOS branched directly out from OS/2 Warp Server 4.52 (or whichever the last official release was) instead of branching out from eComStation 2.1. I, for some reason, thought Arca would branch from eCS. (2:00) The mention of the package manager being based on YUM made me think they might've ported their Linux apps from Fedora or EL.

[@gnntech]

This is correct. Both eComStation and ArcaOS branched off of OS/2 4.52. That is why eComStation has some features and functionality not present in ArcaOS and vice versa. The good thing is you can copy components between them. For example, my daily driver ArcaOS install uses Window button themes and a theme manager I copied from my eComStation install. In general, I find that eComStation had nicer GUI tools whereas Arca has much stronger driver and USB support. The two areas that Arca really needs to improve upon are wifi driver support and multimedia in DOS and Win-OS/2 sessions. Supposedly both are coming in 5.1 but we will see.

[@whaleguy]

@@gnntech Is there any reason eCS stopped development? Why can't Arca reuse their components? Is it because they are proprietary? Lastly, is there any push by Arca to bring OS/2 into the 21st century so to speak, or is its primary goal for maintaining backwards compatibility?

[@seanb7969]

You did a wonderful job on this video as always!

[@MichaelMJD]

Thank you!

[@robertmaxey5406]

I still have all of my OS2 install disks for several versions, like Warp. I loved the OS

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

I always found it fascinating how OS/2 1.0 has a Windows 3.1-like UI. I call it Windows NT 2

[@muhammed_aksam]

But I think NT stands for "Nice Try" instead of "New Technology"

[@teknixstuff]

That's actually correct lol, NT is based on OS/2!

[@klausschmidt982]

@@teknixstuff Parts of the OS/2 based LAN Manager were adopted into NT but most of NT, the kernel in particular is not a derivative of OS/2 at all. When Dave Cutler and his team started working on NT in 1988/89, they took inspiration from their previous work at DEC such as VMS and Mica. That’s why for example the NT kernel is separated into an „executive“ and a „kernel“ functional units like the VMS operating system which made use of the 4 privileges levels (which included kernel and executive) of the VAX architecture. Also, for anyone who developed drivers for NT, the concepts IRQLs and IRPs you likely have heard of are straight out of VMS. To sum it up, it is true that (early) NT and OS/2 shared some code and concepts but in most ways they are entirely different beasts.

[@drygnfyre]

It's actually the inverse. OS/2's GUI showed up around 1988 or 1989, and Windows 3 was released in 1990. So the latter used the basic design of the former.

[@vladls]

@@muhammed_aksam Correct

[@4CardsMan]

I was able to get OLE running on OS/2. I linked Lotus 1-2-3 to a program in Win/OS/2. I made a change in a spreadsheet, and it showed up on the Win/OS/2 program. Pretty impressive.

[@JanSzafranski]

Good to see this. I was a developer on the original OS/2 and there when IBM and MS split (I chose MS as their vision for OS/2, renamed NT, seemed the more successful idea)

[@JanSzafranski]

There are apparently 2 comments, yet I see nothing

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

0:20 and the dynamic trio of the letters M J and D joined efforts to make another fantastic video.

[@osholio]

I ran OS/2 from 2.0 onwards well into the Windows NT era, in many ways it was superior to Windows at the time, but the lack of being able to run 32-bit Windows apps (though some Win32S apps could run) and the lack of good OS/2 native apps killed it off. Many a BBS system ran it due to its far better multitasking for example. It was hampered by some technical limitations they never fixed in the Intel version (single input queue I'm looking at you) but when you got it working it worked well.

[@blucy10]

You could see ATMs that were running Warp in to the 2010s. Very solid.

[@tradde11]

That is why I went to OS/2 to run a 2 line BBS. Windows multitasking then was horrid or non-existent. OS/2 did quite well.

[@stephencox4224]

Arca OS has Wine to do that and they have just released Wine 8 so compatability should be OK the only bugbear is it is 32 bit and despite many calls they will not release the code probably because some of it belongs to Microsoft, Some have tried to build a 64 bit core for OS2 but nothing so far up to scratch.

[@rookiegplays]

@@tradde11 Ha! I did the same thing. WWIV BBS. It was a fun time.

[@tradde11]

@@rookiegplays That it was. I remember also dialing into many of the BBS in the my area. I really enjoyed my 4 or 5 years being a Sysop.

[@HDTube101]

That is one thing I still miss to this day. The look of the windows and the ability to set your own window colours, like the borders and stuff. Unfortunately everyone went to the "flat" interface for the icons, windows and such, including the phone manufacturers.

[@JoBot__]

I absolutely love skeuomorphic design, and it appalls me that everyone dropped it like it was nothing. I still love Windows 7 more than any OS I've ever used.

[@karenwang313]

I have no clue why microsoft got rid of the original windows theme, they could have just left it there for those of us who thought it looked cool.

[@OCTAGRAM]

@@karenwang313 They also blocked UXTheme patchers in some Windows 10 updates. So it was still possible to mod Windows 10 like XP, Millenium or whatever, but it was blocked. They spit into our souls.

[@Vlad-1986]

Man, thank you! I friggin love OS2, and was always tempted to try this. But the $130 license and no guarantee it'll work freaked me out.... At least I now can see how it looks! I still can't afford the license, but maybe one day I'll treat myself to it.

[@bulldogcraft]

Living in Waterloo, Ontario all you had to do was go to the University of Waterloo. (A lot of programmers there) They were handing out cd's with licenses like candy. I must have picked up at least 15 copies back then for free and I didn't even go to the University!

[@tradde11]

I would not mind trying it either, but not for $130.

[@jd31068]

Ah, this brings back memories of the NT v OS/2 wars. I forwarded this along to the 1 guy in our office that held on to OS/2 for as long as he could.

[@tosvus]

Brings back memories. When I was in the army, they had an office where you could use the computers, learn software, take some classes etc, and someone had installed 3D studio (before Max came out), on a machine running OS2. I had a blast creating 3d animations and have tinkered with graphics ever since.

[@agentooe33AD]

I remember getting contracted to setup a room full of PCs, run the networking, and installing OS/2 Warp on them, which I had no experience with at that point. It was actually (at the time) a slick looking OS. I remember thinking, hey maybe I'll see if I can get a copy of it. This was interesting, and then I went and looked how much ArcaOS was, and yeah, nevermind. Great video though!

[@vvgr409]

Nice video but there is one thing missing here for me - you didn't mention that ArcaOS comes with Odin (you can see it in Installed Software folder) that lets you run some Win32 software (for Windows NT or Windows 95 and later). It's something like Wine (in fact I believe it uses some code from Wine) and lets you run Windows binaries. That would be interesting addition to the Win-OS/2 which is obviously limited to Win16 applications (well, excluding Win32s that is more limited).

[@puppylove3781]

Yeah, from what I understand, Odin is comparable to Win32s for Windows 95 OSR2. Great if it would be able to actually do more standpoint of a 32-bit stub loader. Fantastic if it would do 32/64-bit compatibility too, but even full 32 bit compliance would move it far ahead. You could use that for most things then, and it would probably (optionally) create a 64 bit extender piggybacking off of the 32 as WoW (Windows over Windows) did.

[@DivergentDroid]

@@puppylove3781 I'd love anew os but it needs to be able to play my windows 64 bit games like Skyrim or Red Dead Redemption 2.

[@stargazer7644]

OS/2 was originally intended to be the next version of Windows (before the IBM/Microsoft split), so it shouldn't be too surprising it can run Windows software. It isn't an emulator, it *IS* Windows. The next version from Microsoft eventually became Windows NT, and that's what OS/2 was intended to be.

[@vvgr409]

@@stargazer7644 OS/2 wasn't intended to be "next Windows". OS/2 was intended to be new OS that would replace both Windows and DOS. OS/2 1.x that were developed by both Microsoft and IBM didn't had any compatibility with Windows (aside from WLO that was additional not included with OS/2). Windows compatibility came after split.

[@OCTAGRAM]

@@DivergentDroidWindows PE format contains legacy MZ header with 16-bit executable, usually a stub printing something about OS requirement. Some programs, usually Windows installers, had non-trivial two halves of executable, for DOS and Windows. There was also Windows 16-bit format, so triple executable is possible. Simultaneous 16-bit and 32-bit counterparts are also possible in OS/2, but I've heard it went further. Not only they can be present together, but loaded and be executed together. OS/2 provides switching between 16-bit and 32-bit code, and this feature is built into the OS deeply. There was no need to throw out working 16-bit components. Until 64-bit appeared. Long mode does not support switching to 16-bit, so either 16-bit components have to be eliminated, or operating system has to incorporate 16-bit emulator.

[@EsteeZeta]

Dude, you made me cry, i had the same speakers, keyboard and phone, nice setting, like and suscribed, thank you

[@johnjon1823]

Loved it. It allowed more program memory and we could run highly advances SAS statistical software on a desktop for the first time ever. Helped our business sales and profits immensely and helped our staff learn software we could not otherwise use. It was a fantastic OS.

[@NormanF62]

I’d like to see Michael do a video on GeosOS. That was an OS that ran on Brother word processors back in the day.

[@manuell3505]

I remember it as a DOS-program like Windows 3.11...

[@mardus_ee]

The word processor Brother Super PowerNote has Geos, and comes with GeoWorks Ensemble, which is now Breadbox Ensemble. It's a full office suite. There are several KZbinrs who have already covered the topic. There's also a low-cost GeoBook computer featured in several other videos.

[@daspec]

I loved the original OS/2 Warp back in the day on my 486. It was solid as a rock and never crashed. In fact I used to run in Win 3.1 inside OS/2 FASTER than natively which is crazy.

[@creakycracker]

I have heard IBM ran the Windows code through IBM's compiler which optimized the WIN-OS2 code.

[@the_motherfucker]

"Faster" isn't an acronym

[@johnangelico667]

Word Perfect Ctrl- commands were always unique and non-CUA compliant - as you found out. That's why the keyboard template was essential. I used to run a cut-down version called "LetterPerfect" because it was simpler and had all the features I needed at lower cost.

[@Paul29Esx]

One of my first jobs was installing and building OS2 servers for a large retail bank. They used to specially contract new drivers as it was well after it's date when it had left support

[@TexpatOTG]

Been an OS/2 developer and fanboy for years. Worked with Warp Server and Warp. I also was friends with the Ecomstation guys in Dallas. If OS/2 had won the desktop competition, the entire landscape would be better now. I also remember when Microsoft bought and killed off Digital Research and the idea of a multi-user DOS died with it. That set back desktop computing by years. I even did some work for the MITS people in Albuquerque on the first kit PC's. The history of all of this stuff is interesting. Glad to see there is still interest in the O/S2 system ...

[@Pablonmon]

I used it for a couple of years before windows 95. It had horrible compatibility issues with specific DOS games, at the time I spent days trying to get Ultima VII to run until I finally just made a DOS boot disk for it. I loved the windows integration though at the time. Nice to see it's still around in some form.

[@AgentOffice]

How much was it

[@PeterRichardsandYoureNot]

We ran a non-gui version of os/2 circa 1989 for our voice mail system back in the day. The os was rock solid and multi-tasked way better than windows not of the time. Used digiboards for vmail integration into our mark IV NEC phone system. Good stuff and easy integration.

[@ericbosken3114]

"It asks to modify config.sys ..." Wow, that was a blast from the past!

[@jesse7631]

I tried out OS2/Warp for a while and really liked it. Compared to Windows 3.11, it had a lot of strengths. It was like the Betamax of operating systems.

[@mudi2000a]

But it was slow AF. I had a Pentium back then when OS/2 Warp was new and even on that it sucked. Windows 3.1 had its weaknesses but it was much faster. And as soon as NT 4.0 was out that was really much better, at least for me.

[@Bill_v1]

@@mudi2000a With a Pentium, your bottleneck was not the processor. 8MB of RAM was really needed to run properly.

[@mudi2000a]

@@Bill_v1 I had 16 MB however.

[@Bill_v1]

@@mudi2000a That's interesting. I ran OS/2 quite well with a 486sx and 8MB. Later upgraded to a Pentium (at work), then a Pentium II at home.

[@mudi2000a]

@@Bill_v1 I mean it was not that bad. Maybe the drivers were not ideal. In any case Windows NT 4.0 ran much smoother on the same machine but I ultimately upgraded then to 32 MB.

[@davidsyes5970]

Who remembers when, back then, one of the touted features of OS/2 was never again misplacing or renaming a critical file and having an app not work? In Windows, then and now, if you move/rename an .exe or .dll or other file and try to use an app, it wouldn't or won't work. OS/2 had a logger that would update the affected app so that it would just run. Not long after that feature description, it got assailed as a security risk in that unless a file were truly deleted, someone could exploit that to run older versions of critical files, or to uncover content in older versions meant to be non-shared. Even in Windows today, if a file isn't deleted, encrypted, or just made in a virtual file system never allowed to be on the media and not let to leave RAM, someone with the right tools (forensic or MITM attack) could learn of the files used.

[@blainepalmerza]

Awesome video, Michael!

[@macadoum]

Looks like an exciting operating system!

[@brentsummers7377]

OS/2 was still being used around 2005 at some gas stations on managers computers and maybe the till machines as well.

[@VictorDomingos]

It would be nice to see a review of the Haiku operating system, which is based on an open source implementation of BeOS. The beta 4 release has come out recently.

[@dbcooper7326]

I used OS2 Warp as it was the only supported software to connect to the AS400 and SAS. Rock solid. Fond memories of it. Even dial up to Compuserve via an US Robotics Speedster.

[@CyberneticArgumentCreator]

My uncle worked as a large business consultant for PWC. I remember back in the late 1980s/early 1990s we went over to my cousins' house one time and he showed me this alien software that wasn't System Software, Windows, or DOS. I remember thinking it looked super slick as an elementary schooler. It was OS/2. This is the first time I've seen it in any form since then, and it's funny how old it looks when in my young mind's memory it was as visually sharp as XP or Vista.

[@_chrisr_]

From what I recall of WordPerfect you could assign macros to keys - if you pressed a key combination that didn't have a macro saved to it you got that error about the file being missing.

[@Sylvan_dB]

I used to really like OS/2 starting with 2.0. It's ability to run multiple DOS applications made my life as a developer much easier. (Previously I ran DESQView, remember that?) I ran OS/2 until I started switching to NT4 for desktop and Linux for servers in the late 1990s. By Windows 2000 OS/2 was nothing more than a fond memory. Linux and MacOS do everything I need today.

[@WeeGraeme68]

I ran a single line BBS on OS/2 Warp on a 386SX initially. It ran well. (Before that I also used DESQView on an 8 MHz XT with an Intel Above Board Plus, giving me 1.5 megs of ram on that XT!) I also remember going to withdraw cash from my bank account and seeing an OS/2 command prompt. I rang my bank and told them. They told me I couldn't be seeing that. Once I told them that I used OS/2 on my own PC and that I knew what I was seeing, they changed their tune and thanked me for letting them know.

[@jaimecosta2966]

Excelente vídeo... I am getting old saying that I started using computeres around Dos 6 I have loads of old software and some hardware like a hand held scanner stil in a box.... It's probably a good hobby installibg and trying this software... Wish you well

[@mdavid1955]

Great Scot! Back to the 90's!

[@EvilTurkeySlices]

WinOS/2 really reminds of of Classic in Mac OS X on PPC macs.

[@bite-sizedshorts9635]

Some of the control combinations are meant to call up macros in WP. I wrote a lot of them for a law firm in the late 80s. I use Ctrl-L for letters, Ctrl-M for memos, Ctrl-P for pleadings, etc. If you look at the keyboard template, you can see the keystrokes for recording your own macros and saving them with longer names. You access them with Alt-F10, type the macro name, and enter. There was no mouse in WP 5.1 for DOS, just keystrokes. So I had to memorize the most used ones so I wouldn't have to waste time looking for them on the keyboard template. I still remember most of them after more than 30 years.

[@ralphmiranda2077]

It's so powerful it does real-time video output conversion to animated GIF89a! /s Honestly, that was cool. I was hopeful that OS/2 would be great competition for Windows.

[@WaynesWorld69]

I used to run BBS on OS/2. Loved the OS and had several computers running it. Loved Warp but I'm not sure any of the PCs of the day had the power to run the voice recognition properly.

[@MartinIturbide]

We are now experimenting with Qt5 and a browser called Dooble that uses the Chromium engine. It is still on beta, but we hope to have a modern browser.

[@jakeparkinson8929]

Is ArcaOs limited to CSM/Legacy boot? Intel dropped support for CSM boot on their processors circa 2020, meaning older operating systems can not boot on their processors without virtualization.

[@bregrif19]

@Jake Parkinson ArcaOS 5.1 should support booting in UEFI mode on a range of systems which provide a recent UEFI implementation, from either GPT or MBR partitioned disks.

[@MartinIturbide]

@@jakeparkinson8929 ArcaOS 5.1 will be released with UEFI and GPT support. I'm currently using a beta and it is working fine for me.

[@willallen7757]

That yellow phone you have off the hook, was the kitchen phone at my parents for almost a decade.

[@Humble_Electronic_Musician]

It looks awesome! 15:52 Word Perfect ❤

[@RooMan93]

My previous PC from roughly 2010 had OS/2 options in the bios. PC legacy is both a blessing and a curse

[@kFY514]

I honestly don't know which is more impressive: all the technical continuity and legacy that you see in the PC land where you can easily find traces of the original 5150 design in today's computers and clear echoes of MS-DOS in modern Windows - or the fact that Apple managed to keep continuity of the Mac as a product line even though on the technical side, the architecture of both hardware and software was reset from scratch many times over.

[@helmaschine1885]

1:14 "It was first announced in n 2015, although you wouldn't be able to tell that from this video of the presentation that looks and sounds like it was filmed in 1993"

[@FlyboyHelosim]

Like a lot of the more obscure Linux distros.

[@AmaanHasanDilawar]

Love your work

[@xuser48]

I started out on OS/2 2.1 Beta. I still have my 3.0 rig on the shelf behind me. Amazing what that OS could do with just 32 MiB of RAM and a 100MHz 486.

[@SeanKStephens]

I was so excited to get my copy of OS/2 Warp 4. That excitement changed to disappointment as I found I could barely get any software for it and the only way to use it was to open a WinOS window. My employer at the time was using OS/2 so it seemed to be a reasonable option, but less than a year later my employer switched to a Microsoft ecosystem like nearly everyone else.

[@bwc1976]

Loved OS/2 as a teenager when I ran my BBS! Sadly the Windows compatibility didn't continue into the Windows 95 era, when Windows was finally starting to become semi-decent. It would take until XP before home versions of Windows were as reliable as OS/2 had been.

[@DocNo27]

I wish I still had my pink Team OS/2 polo from Comdex in the '90s. OS/2 was amazing - I loved running a multiline BBS with it (Maximus OS/2 FTW).

[@blucy10]

I had an OS/2 apron which said “cooking with OS/2”. Wish I still had it.

[@bwc1976]

I ran Maximus too!

[@meskes4059]

OS/2 Warp 4 was the shit. Absolutely loved it.

[@watch_kitty]

FUCK YES! I've been wondering when you'd do a video on this OS and you finally did it!

[@FlyboyHelosim]

OK calm down.

[@watch_kitty]

@@FlyboyHelosim no u

[@FlyboyHelosim]

@@watch_kitty nO u 😫

[@watch_kitty]

@@FlyboyHelosim U oN

[@JustPyroYT]

Thats cool. I've never heard of this OS before

[@BrianSPaskin]

I had WordPerfect for OS/2. Nice to see someone use it after all these years.

[@CMDRSweeper]

So how much did you have to pay for it back in the day if you recall? Would be an interesting addition to the tale of Word Perfect.

[@BrianSPaskin]

@@CMDRSweeper i had a discount through IBM so I think I paid around $150 but that was 30 years ago.

[@kienanvella]

My 486DX2 I had as a kid ran OS/2 WARP 4, and my dad used eCommStation for a long time, right up until shortly after the GA release, on an Athlon X2 box.

[@ronpeacock9939]

I loved OS/2, and it had capabilities that Windows NT could not do. I was sad to see it go away.

[@daniel_lucio]

ArcaOs is very good for its USB and Video driver package. For my older computers however I still use eComStation 2.1 with Lotus suite. BTW, Wordperfect 2021 is installed on all my current computers, I love this suite.

[@kantraa]

WordPerfect still exists?

[@PKZAIT]

@@kantraa Wordprefect still around. Now owned by Corel.

[@MrAtsyhere]

Thanks for the walk down memory lane. Now I remember why I bought an Atari ST in the day.

[@bwc1976]

ST was amazing for its time, even if not as good as Amiga :)

[@Preske]

I remember my dad having a OS/2 Warp laptop via work. good times.

[@randallstewart1224]

In a small business environment, I started with DOS and suffered though some years of task swappers and other operating programs which crashed at the oddest moments. Windows came along, adding nothing to my workflow. Then came OS/2 "Warp" (replacing a totally different OS/2 previously used by IBM), which gave a relatively solid platform for DOS, Windows 3.1, and OS/2 native programs if you could find any. By then, I had hundred of hours of form files developed in WordPerfect 5.0 and later, and they remained a core investment for me. I bought OS/2 and rode it through versions until after Windows 98 came out. I had to shift to 98 because I had to interact with outside systems which required a Windows environment. One of the big advantages of OS/2 was that if you wanted to learn how, you could modify the operating system to do all sort of functions and performance variations, totally impossible in Windows. Gates didn't honor OS/2. He was terrified of it. It was functionally a decade ahead of Windows. It's dedicated file system was so much better than Microsoft's that Gates/Microsoft stole it, and it is still the standard today. IBM wanted OS/2 to interface with its provision of services at the industrial level and could care less about consumer use. Gates at that time had no product which would compete there, but he correctly saw that the future money was in consumer products and sales. IBM thought they could access both worlds by incorporating a Windows kernel in OS/2, but Gates screwed them by refusing to renew their license past Win 3.1. By the way, I have (had?) a full copy of WordPerfect for OS/2. It was a Dog!. It was just a version of WP for Windows which was poorly ported over to run with many bugs on OS/2. It was//is not a native OS/2 program, and it was almost unusable and Slow.

[@eriksiers]

It's interesting to see how ArcaOS differs from eComStation... which is very, very little. I run eCS 2.1 on my ancient Thinkpad and it honestly looks pretty much the same. I've been considering switching to ArcaOS, but based on this video, I don't think I really need to.

[@Qyngali]

ArcaOS supports NVME drives and UEFI systems, it's a pretty big difference.

[@eriksiers]

@@Qyngali Perhaps. But my systems that support UEFI are definitely NOT running any version of OS/2 (Linux on one and Windows on the other) and I also don't have any NVME drives... or even any motherboards that support them. 🤷‍♂️

[@Qyngali]

@@eriksiers so you have tried ArcaOS on the UEFI system? Maybe you did before they added UEFI support?

[@eriksiers]

@@Qyngali no, that was kind of my point. I don't have it, and at this point, I don't really see a need for it. eComStation works for me, does everything I need it to on my ancient laptop, and I have no intention of putting it on either of my systems that support UEFI anyway.

[@benefactr1840]

Remember getting a OS2 WARP beta for free. Wasn't hard to do seemed like. Used it for a bit back in the day and it actually did seem to perform better then windows 3.1.

[@zachwilliams2597]

this is fascinating!

[@Soundwave142]

I was kind of disappointed, I was hoping that it was a modern IBM OS, even though I am a young whipper snapper and adopted Linux. I was hoping that that it would be a competitor to Windows. But it is fascinating that people made a modernized OS2 to run OS2 software.

[@alisharifian535]

Bill Gates was seeing those days are coming,so while they were working on OS/2 for IBM,they changed their mind and started developing a 32-bit Windows that later called it Wibdows NT.