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December 16, 2002

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OS/2's Future

I wonder about OS/2's future. Over the last weeks I have wondered what will happen to the PC market as we know it today. OS/2 has served me well over the years. As we all know, the move to 64 bit should have taken place a long time ago. In the computer world a few years is like going back to the stone age or moving into the next century or further. :-) The Intel Itanium has been a major miscalculation on Intel's part, but what will happen when the AMD Hammer becomes available? Many people are going to want a 64 bit OS, as it has many benefits: more speed, more memory that can be addressed, bigger data can be manipulated, stuff like that.

OS/2 has passed this struggle one time before, when moveing from 16 to 32 bit. and it turned out great for OS/2, as even the latest OS/2 has little to no problem with 16 bit drivers and software.

Windows has always had problems with moving from 16 to 32 bit, and I'm sure they have the same problems again moving to 64 bit.

But how about OS/2? Will it move also to a 64 bit Kernel? Are the eCS people working on this? I sure hope so. What about IBM? Can there be anything expected from them? Because if it doesn't, we could be well in trouble. Does anyone have a clue?

IBM has stated that there won't be an OS/2 64 bit version, but as usual, they can't be trusted on this, they have also stated many times before that there wouldn't be a new version of OS/2, but they have released 3 new versions. (Well sort of, WSeB, convenience-packs and eCS.) They also stated that OS/2 would be ported to the PowerPC, but they never finished this. OS/2 wouldn't support USB, but yet it does. Drivers wouldn't be developed anymore, but yet, they still release new drivers all the time. I wouldn't be surprised if IBM would come up with a new kernel to support 64 bit CPU's to give more address-space to OS/2. IBM has done many strange things in the past.

On Netlabs I found a project to replace OS/2's kernel with a Linux kernel, but the outcome of this is far from sure, will it ever work? Let's wait and find out. Maybe the eCS crowd can make it happen? I hope so.

One thing is for sure, OS/2 will make some sort of move to 64 bit, one way or the other. Because if it doesn't, it will vanish just like Windows 3.x, people won't stay with an operating system that won't pull the maximum power out of their new 64 bit system.

And this has always been OS/2's strength on the 32 bit platform, no other OS is so powerful as OS/2 on 32 bit CPU's. Not Linux, not BeOS, not Solaris or any other Unix or even Windows.

One thing is for sure, it will be a hard task to get OS/2 using 64 bit, with all the assembler coding in there. :-)

Will OS/2 make the transition to 64 bit computing? Bring your opinion to the forums.

Bas Heijermans has been using computers for 24 years - since he was 12. Bas lives in Belgium and has used OS/2 since version 1.1. He ran The OS/2 BBS and was the Belgium OS/2 Fido moderator. IBM awarded him Official OS/2 Ambassidor in 1992 for his support efforts. Today he repairs computers for a living.

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