What the heck is this operating system called OS2 anyway?

OS/2 not OS2. A really powerful 32 bit operating system for IBM and intel compatabile personal computers. Originally developed starting back in 1987, by both Microsoft and IBM to replace DOS. Does not contain a bit of DOS, or have DOS weaknesses, like Windows95/98/ME. Has true multitasking capabilities. And is quite stable. Also known as OS/2 Warp. They called it Warp because it is very fast. (StarTrek)

OS/2 is very similar to Win9x in terms of what it does. However, it is entirely a 32-bit OS (not partially 16-bit like Win9x). As for supporting multitasking, OS/2 does but it is NOT a fully preemptive OS. So, a single application can lock up the entire OS if it doesn't release the execution thread (and is probably one of the worst parts of OS/2). However, OS/2 memory management is superior to Win9x, and until Windows 2000 was released, superior to WinNT. As for application support, OS/2 in its basic form can run standard OS/2 and PM applications as well as DOS and some Win16 (Windows 3.1) programs. It has been loosing more and more support from IBM, and in my opinion, will require IBM releasing the source code to end-users that care in order to keep OS/2 alive. Driver support has dwindled in the last few years and games for OS/2 are very rare.

THANK YOU! Very informative...

Boy, don't we OS/2 users just love to kick ourselves into the balls (sorry ladies!).... Can you imagine an answer like this on a Win9x forum: "Well, to say Win9x is an operating system might be the joke of the century. Actually it's a load of pieced together crap that cannot run for more than 49.7 days (no joke this!) without crashing. But nobody has found this out yet, because it keeps crashing way before this. Come on, Aaron - you can do better than this! BTW: the (nasty) behaviour of the WPS you were describing is better described as a program blocking the Single Input Queue. This freezes the shell but does NOT crash the OS. If you happen to have WatchCat or ProcessCommander installed, you could simply kill the offending session and/or restart the WPS and ... bingo! ... OS/2 alive and kicking again. Win-NT (or Win2K/XP) users use the task manager for the very same purpose. Win9x users: sorry, not a chance.

microsoft windows users complain about the shortcomings of windows too 1."windows ME is the worst OS I have ever used" 2. "windows xp is still in beta and I will not consider buying it until SP1 is released" 3. "why you guys still use windows 3.1?" blah blah blah. It seems to me that every OS out there has shortcomings, so you just pick and choose the shortcomings you can tolerate. Thanks for the description on OS/2. I have OS/2 ver 2.1 from the thrift store for $5 and must say that the only thing I miss is the lack of software for it.