OS/2 vs. early Windows

[lowen]

My notes say that SLS was announced in August 1992. While was X11 likely was included, I'm not sure how useful it was at that point, I have not used it. Also, I did see that the network stack and drivers were in a bit of a flux. Also, SLS was considered buggy. So as a 32-bit OS in 1992, it was not quite ready.

I ran SLS for a short time a month or so before I met my wife, and I met her on August 14, 1992. But SLS was not the only 1993 Linux distribution. See https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-linux-distributions-of-1992 for more, including TAMU, which also had XFree86 included.

Yes, SLS was considered buggy, and thus Debian and Slackware were conceived; both are still updated to this day, and I'm personally running Debian 12.

 

[lowen]

I ran SLS for a short time a month or so before I met my wife, and I met her on August 14, 1992.

Correction: in looking back in my email storage from back in the day, I downloaded SLS after I met my wife, not before. Downloaded from Mac's Place BBS over 9600 bps dialup. Looking in Usenet archives, Peter announced SLS as being available for download 8/15/1992; the May 1992 date is referred to all over the Internet as the date it was 'founded' whatever that is supposed to mean.

 

[Makefile]

Correction: in looking back in my email storage from back in the day, I downloaded SLS after I met my wife, not before. Downloaded from Mac's Place BBS over 9600 bps dialup. Looking in Usenet archives, Peter announced SLS as being available for download 8/15/1992; the May 1992 date is referred to all over the Internet as the date it was 'founded' whatever that is supposed to mean.

Did you come to Linux by way of Minix or straight from Tandy Xenix?

 

[lowen]

Did you come to Linux by way of Minix or straight from Tandy Xenix?

Xenix -> AT&T/Convergent System V Release 2 on 3B1 -> Apollo DomainOS on a pair of DN3500's -> Linux

There were a few detours along the way, like a short time with straight MS-DOS plus Waffle on an Epson 8088, a few months with DESQview on a 386SX with 5MB, a short run with Windows 95 (on that same 386SX with 5MB of RAM), but by the time Red Hat Linux 4.0 was available I bought a boxed set and ran RHL. I've been running a Linux of some kind as my primary desktop ever since.

That's my personal desktop; obviously I've had to use Windows or whatever at work, but in the current day job I'm running Linux, with Windows of various versions in VM's when required.

More to the topic at hand, I did evaluate OS/2 back in the day, and it really was solid. It would have been a much better system, in my opinion, than the thunking system of VXDs we got, known as Windows/386 (the VMM386.VXD operating system's lineage from Windows/386 2.0 through Windows 3.0 enhanced mode through Windows for Workgroups 3.11 where VMM386.VXD with its various thunked-in 32-bit drivers really became its own OS, only using DOS as a loader through Windows 95 (where DOS as a loader became 'hidden') through Windows 98 and ending with Windows ME -- the VMM386.VXD OS grew organically).

We did finally get what OS/2 promised with Windows NT.

But my personal wish would have been a Xenix core with a reasonable GUI on top, but that didn't happen.

 

[MennoJoshua]

Win 3.1 has the advantage it could run acceptable in 2MB of RAM and performed well with 4. It also was usable in a 286 and performed well on a 386.

MS OS/2 2.0 actually performed pretty well on a 4MB 386 but unfortunately never got released. It predated Windows 3.0!