OS/2

walterbell · on April 7, 2019

Anecdote: OS/2 ISV was responsible for bringing the Start button back to Windows.

karmakaze · on April 6, 2019

Well OS/2 v3.0 became Windows NT so sort of succeeded, just not for IBM or in name (unless you count cash registers).

ksaj · on April 7, 2019

That's not particularly accurate. Windows NT was based on VMS. OS/2 is quite different. The interfaces are related, but the same is true for all Windows variants on the grand timeline.

The good news is that if you are feeling particularly nostalgic and have a 16 or 32 bit processor (or emulator), you can relive the OS/2 glory days with ArcaOS from https://www.arcanoae.com/arcaos/ It'll cost you about $130 for a personal license, but if you want it, it's still there, and still supported.

mrbill · on April 7, 2019

Dave Cutler (one of the designers of VMS at DEC) led the development of WNT at MS. While some ideas may have trickled down, WNT isn't "based" on VMS. If it was, it would be a lot better :D

(Still waiting for the x86-64 VMS port to be completed... https://www.vmssoftware.com/products_roadmap.html)

ksaj · on April 7, 2019

Correct in the official sense, and it fits the EEE mantra to a T.

As we all know, transposing each initial by 1 from VMS gets you WNT. Rather like the HAL/IBM Space Odyssey factoid.

bhouston · on April 7, 2019

Spiritually maybe. The lineage between the two isn't official.

dragonwriter · on April 7, 2019

Windows NT is what the project Microsoft was working on as their planned next version of OS/2 got renamed after Microsoft and IBM broke off their partnership and IBM kept OS/2.

karmakaze · on April 7, 2019

True. I was working with OS/2 pre-releases at the time.

https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/OS%2f2+NT

Also, Wikipedia "OS/2 NT" redirects to Windows NT.