Ancient OS wars [was Re: AMD Bulldozer vs. Intel i7-2600 -- I don't get it!]

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>

| OS/2 1.x only ran one DOS program at a time and not well.  Released in
| 1988.
| 
| OS/2 2.0 did much better, but was released in 1992.
| 
| Windows 3.0 used the 386, could run multiple DOS programs quite well at
| the same time.  Released in May 1990.  About two years before OS/2 2.0.
| A very long time in the computer world.

| OS/2 1.x was irrelevant, and OS/2 2.x was too late.

At the time I was in the UNIX world.  I thought that UNIX should
dominate the x86 market once the hardware was good enough (286 was OK,
386 was great) but the promises of OS/2 and then NT seemed to keep the
market from trying UNIX.

On the desktop x86, I don't think X got decent until somewhere around
1992 but if you really wanted GUI, x86 wasn't where it was at:

- Mac, Amiga, Atari were all better, starting around 1985

- Sun etc were much more to my taste a couple of years later

- in 1992 there were a bunch of very decent System V r4.2 distributions of 
  UNIX for 386 (including Consensys that I helped produce, Esix that Evan 
  liked, and even a good one from Dell (not limited to Dell hardware)).  
  Also available from Commodore for high-end Amigas.  They should have 
  taken off.  (There had been earlier decent UNIXes too.)

No, the best OS didn't win.  The platform with the mindshare won.  As 
always.
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