OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 relative to Microsoft's new Windows 3.1 operating environment, the two companies severed the relationship in 1992, and OS/2 development fell to IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2" because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 (PS/2)" line of second-generation personal computers. The first version of OS/2 was released in December 1987, and newer versions were released until December 2001.
OS/2 was intended as a protected-mode successor of PC DOS. Notably, basic system calls were modeled after MS-DOS calls; their names even started with "Dos," and it was possible to create "Family Mode" applications – text mode applications that could work on both systems. Because of this heritage, OS/2 shares similarities with Unix, Xenix, and Windows NT.
IBM discontinued its support for OS/2 on 31 December 2006. Since then, OS/2 has been developed, supported, and sold by two different third-party vendors under license from IBM – first by Serenity Systems as eComStation since 2001, and later by Arca Noae LLC as ArcaOS since 2017.
eComStation or eCS is an operating system based on OS/2 Warp for the 32-bit x86 architecture. It was originally developed by Serenity Systems and Mensys BV under license from IBM. It includes additional applications and support for new hardware which were not present in OS/2 Warp. It is intended to allow OS/2 applications to run on modern hardware and is used by a number of large organizations for this purpose. By 2014, approximately thirty to forty thousand licenses of eComStation had been sold.
Financial difficulties at Mensys in 2012 led to the development of eComStation stalling and ownership being transferred to a sister company named XEU.com (now known as PayGlobal Technologies BV), which continues to sell and support the operating system. The lack of a new release since 2011 was one of the motivations for the creation of the ArcaOS OS/2 distribution
ArcaOS is an operating system based on OS/2, developed and marketed by Arca Noae, LLC under license from IBM.[3][4] It was codenamed Blue Lion during its development.[5] It builds on OS/2 Warp 4.52 by adding support for new hardware, fixing defects and limitations in the operating system, and by including new applications and tools.[6] It is targeted at professional users who need to run their OS/2 applications on new hardware, as well as personal users of OS/2.[7]
Like OS/2 Warp, ArcaOS is a 32-bit single user, multiprocessing preemptive multitaskingoperating system for the x86 architecture. It is supported on both physical hardware and virtual machine hypervisors.
OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 relative to Microsoft's new Windows 3.1 operating environment, the two companies severed the relationship in 1992, and OS/2 development fell to IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2" because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 (PS/2)" line of second-generation personal computers. The first version of OS/2 was released in December 1987, and newer versions were released until December 2001.
OS/2 was intended as a protected-mode successor of PC DOS. Notably, basic system calls were modeled after MS-DOS calls; their names even started with "Dos," and it was possible to create "Family Mode" applications – text mode applications that could work on both systems. Because of this heritage, OS/2 shares similarities with Unix, Xenix, and Windows NT.
IBM discontinued its support for OS/2 on 31 December 2006. Since then, OS/2 has been developed, supported, and sold by two different third-party vendors under license from IBM – first by Serenity Systems as eComStation since 2001, and later by Arca Noae LLC as ArcaOS since 2017.
eComStation or eCS is an operating system based on OS/2 Warp for the 32-bit x86 architecture. It was originally developed by Serenity Systems and Mensys BV under license from IBM. It includes additional applications and support for new hardware which were not present in OS/2 Warp. It is intended to allow OS/2 applications to run on modern hardware and is used by a number of large organizations for this purpose. By 2014, approximately thirty to forty thousand licenses of eComStation had been sold.
Financial difficulties at Mensys in 2012 led to the development of eComStation stalling and ownership being transferred to a sister company named XEU.com (now known as PayGlobal Technologies BV), which continues to sell and support the operating system. The lack of a new release since 2011 was one of the motivations for the creation of the ArcaOS OS/2 distribution
ArcaOS is an operating system based on OS/2, developed and marketed by Arca Noae, LLC under license from IBM.[3][4] It was codenamed Blue Lion during its development.[5] It builds on OS/2 Warp 4.52 by adding support for new hardware, fixing defects and limitations in the operating system, and by including new applications and tools.[6] It is targeted at professional users who need to run their OS/2 applications on new hardware, as well as personal users of OS/2.[7]
Like OS/2 Warp, ArcaOS is a 32-bit single user, multiprocessing preemptive multitaskingoperating system for the x86 architecture. It is supported on both physical hardware and virtual machine hypervisors.