Did You Use OS/2?

I was just watching a show from around 2004. There were two computer geeks talking and one says “One man’s Linux is another man’s OS/2”. So, it got me thinking, just how was OS/2 perceived in the geek world? Did you use it? What did you like? Hated? I have never had access to it or have talked to anyone who has used it, so I’m curious.

Oh yea I ran OS/2 for a time in the mid '90s. Actually at one point I had a multi-boot machine with Windows95, OS/2 Warp 3.0, BeOS and Slackware. Really with the exception of IBM Works I didn’t have any OS/2 software but it was great at multi-tasking DOS programs. It was a really great OS but still very commercial and limited applications. It was a better Windows than Windows so most people just ran Win 3.1 apps.

BeOS was another that I had seen demos of but never hands on. The demos looked incredible for the time. Was it that good?

BeOS was an absolutely amazing OS. I hoped at the time that Apple would buy Be instead of NeXT. I can say that BeOS was the only OS I’ve ever used that was a pleasure to use, it was actually fun just to use the OS. Yea it lacked hardware support but only slightly worse than Linux of the time. Zeta is a project trying to recreate the binary compatible clone but not sure how well it works.

I know someone that used to work at IBM and left circa 1995, just before he left he dual booted OS2/Warp on my family PC.
I remember it used to have some voice control to move the pointer around and stuff (although you had to spend hours training it to understand you voice)!

It also emulated Win3.1 and had performance monitoring tools in the GUI.

It felt much more powerful than Win95 but never got any traction.

Ran OS/2 for a few years as my main system. Compared to DOS and Windows it was a breath of fresh air. Fairly well designed. Ran DOS/Windows apps better than DOS/Windows.

For a time I ran a dial-up BBS on it 24/7 while I used it as my main machine. And that was on a slow as tar PC.

I can’t think of a good reason to use it nowadays… but back then it was an amazing alternative to Microsoft.