I wouldn’t have said so – at the time the WPS was a huge draw for me. Whilst the multitasking was neat, I’m not sure if I’d have bothered going for OS/2 2.1 without the new interface.

It was very apparent when I went for 2.1 that 8MB was the minimum, and obviously that was expensive at the time. There was mshell too – why bother with a graphical operating system if you’re not going to bother running anything graphical?

By the time OS/2 2.0 came out, whilst running DOS on an every day basis was possible, Windows 3.0 was already pretty established. WYSIWYG was the upcoming thing, and not having to configure per application printer drivers.

I know that generally its no for mixing PM’s but I need to mess around with stuff again some more see if the 1.2-1.21 can be added to anything else.

I love how “barebones” this version is. Just 11 MB for the entire installation. So far it’s been surprisingly stable too, apart from the DOS windows being broken.

It also boots very rapidly compared to any other version of OS/2 I’ve used, with the possible exception of the 1991 pre-release version.

I wonder if the PMSHELL.EXE from this version would run on the GA version?

For sure! It’s been a multiple decades long odyssey to get to this point. Its such a shame these ancient versions were so unobtanium for so long!

Well, the Workplace Shell has left mixed feelings, definitely. On the one hand, many people rightly claim that OS/2 2.x would be better with the old simpler shell at least as a “lean” option for low-end machines. I myself struggled to use OS/2 2.1 on a 4 MiB 386DX40 and it was *painful*. This is probably why I turned to Windows 95 (and eventually to NT 4.0, when I upgraded my hardware).
On the other hand, Workplace Shell was really futuristic. It made all the difference. And it was underused by the applications. This is something great that we had at some point, and then we lost it to never get it back. These times no operating system comes even *close* to replicating Workplace Shell and its functionality.
And WPS worked well on 8 MiB machines, and really great with 12 or 16 MiB of RAM. Which most of us couldn’t afford back in the day.

PS. Note to Neozeed: I *love* how often updates come out recently! I check the website daily for updates and I’m rewarded with really great content so often!

If they’d allowed OS/2 1.2’s Desktop Manager as an option, the whole OS would’ve run a lot better on low-end PCs.

OS/2 2.1 was an improvement, but still pretty average in only 4 MB RAM.

Fortunately someone (at IBM, ironically) had released TSHELL just after 2.1 came out, allowing OS/2 to multitask in text mode without booting Presentation Manager, similar to how OS/2 1.0 ran. It had some limitations but worked well for coding in one window, having a 4OS2 shell in another and running (or downloading from) a BBS with TE/2 in a third window. Good times.

I’m really honored to have participated in this historic moment, it’s been a real wild ride – But totally worth it! 🙂