Chromium-adjacent Otter browser targets OS/2
- Reference: 1645166646
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/02/18/chromium_based_otter_browser_targets_os2/
- Source link:
For the uninitiated, OS/2 was an operating system that was created by IBM and Microsoft in the mid to late 1980s. The OS was compatible with some Windows drivers, but Windows 3.x did so well that the IBM/Microsoft partnership dissolved in unhappy circumstances in 1992. IBM kept OS/2 alive, and its fourth release was widely regarded as superior to Windows 95 and Windows NT. By the time Big Blue brought it to market, though, Microsoft's dominance had been entrenched.
OS/2 gradually faded from use, making occasional public appearances on Automatic Teller Machines' boot screens to remind the wider public of its existence. Perhaps curiously, it was never open-sourced – The Register understands its presence in military hardware made that move inadvisable. After IBM ceased support for it in 2006, development continues under licence – currently by an outfit named Arca Noae that [1]keeps it alive with occasional releases for the small band of enthusiasts who still admire, or require, the software. Which might prove IBM's assertion that it [2]doesn't discriminate against the aged .
[3]
Some of those enthusiasts gather at [4]os2world.com – which on 14 February [5]reported that the Otter browser is being ported to OS/2.
[6]
[7]
Indulge us in another bout of nostalgic exposition, because Otter is an effort to "recreate the best aspects of Opera 12 and to revive its spirit." Opera 12 is significant because it marked the last version of that browser to use its own Presto engine. Later versions adopted WebKit and some Chromium code. Some users preferred Opera before that change, so set out to create Otter – a name chosen because it starts with the letter "O", as does Opera, and has the same number of letters.
Yeah, that otter work.
[8]
Otter employs the [9]Qt 5 cross-platform application framework that itself uses Chromium.
[10]IBM HR chief insists 'no systemic age discrimination'
[11]IBM Cloud to offer Z-series mainframes for first time – albeit for test and dev
[12]Hardware boffin starts work on simulation of an entire IBM S/360 Model 50 mainframe
[13]IBM confirms new mainframe to arrive 'late in first half of 2022'
We now return to os2world.com for this [14]Valentine's Day announcement that Otter is coming to OS/2.
"Current expectation is that first *public* beta of Otter Browser will be released in the last week of February or the first week of March," the post enthuses.
Come March, OS/2 – technology from the 1980s – will therefore have a toehold, however slight, in 2022. ®
Get our [15]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2017/05/19/new_version_of_os_2_arca_os_5/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/15/ibm_age_discrimination/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Yg98XCTtt2PBNPGZU1K85QAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] http://os2world.com
[5] https://www.os2world.com/cms/index.php/past-news/79-news/general/23242-timeline-announcement-for-public-beta-of-new-otter-browser
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yg98XCTtt2PBNPGZU1K85QAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Yg98XCTtt2PBNPGZU1K85QAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yg98XCTtt2PBNPGZU1K85QAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/05/qt_lts_goes_commercial_only/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/15/ibm_age_discrimination/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/15/ibm_cloud_to_offer_cloudy/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/27/ibm_s360_simulation/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/25/ibm_q4_2021/
[14] https://www.os2world.com/cms/index.php/past-news/79-news/general/23242-timeline-announcement-for-public-beta-of-new-otter-browser
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Hmm. Let’s face it Windows, also technology from the eighties, has more than a slight toehold in 2022 - and this despite better alternatives being available.
Speaking of which, Unix (technology from the seventies) and its progeny (Linux, Android, iOS, MacOS) pretty much dominate.
I still have my OS/2 2 install CD - I can’t imagine that I’ll ever use it again.
Technology from the 1980s?
I feel the urge... to hit someone...
Also, since OS/2 is being maintained you're allowed to use present tense when mentioning it.
I can never remember seeing an error screen on an OS/2-based ATM. But you can't walk through a large shopping mall or international airport without seeing at least a few winblows-based ATMs, ticketmachines or info-screens with either white text on blue or a dialog box that someone needs to click away...
Re: Technology from the 1980s?
Seeing an OS/2 boot up splash-screen on the screen of an ATM which contained my only debit card when I was in a foreign city half a world away from home.
The English-speaking tourist police were as nice as pie though. Cash card regained from a branch of the bank which operated the ATM at the bus station.
I always feel a certain nostalgia...
... when anything OS/2 comes up; I used it as my primary OS from the early 90s on until well into the 2000s, and while I never was fond of its file systems' DOS and Windows kinship, there never was a desktop UI again that made me feel even remotely as empowered and at ease at the same time like the Workplace Shell used to, not on Windows and not on Linux, either.
In addition to the article I'd like to mention that Microsoft had another, less innocuous part in OS/2's "gradually fading from use" than just Windows' rising popularity, which became public years later through a witness statement in one of the several antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft. It was around the time when Windows 95 was about to take on the world when Microsoft blackmailed IBM, whose PC division was still important at the time, threatening to stop giving Windows to the PC division unless IBM's software division stopped promoting OS/2 to the consumer market. And that was it.
By the way, to the best of my knowledge the main reason why it never was open sourced was that it included quite a number of third-party components without which the OS wouldn't have been complete. All the creators of those components, some of which wouldn't even have been traceable anymore, would have had to be contacted and brought to also agree to the open-sourcing. IBM themselves, or so was my impression, would have been ready and willing to open-source OS/2.
Whenever I read about OS/2 it makes me want to fire up the eComStation (ArcaOS predecessor) VM I still have... Although I confess that I never really considered buying a copy of that latest incarnation, or 'distro', as one might name it, ArcaOS. Even if it might still be usable in general as long as the few applications it has would suffice, in 2022 its most obvious limitation is its being a 32-bit OS.
Best headline
Bravo
The first OS I could say "Microphone off" to, and it would switch it off.
With Windows you could set something up in no time, but it would also crash all the time. It took a little longer to set something up in OS/2, but after that it just kept on working forever.
Re: The first OS I could say "Microphone off" to, and it would switch it off.
Yeah, this is why I use Linux... it takes a bit longer to figure out how to fix something, but then it's FIXED.
Windows breaks. You fix it. Then it breaks the identical way next week.
Saw OS/2 in the wild on professional photo-processing machinery as well, at Klick Photopoint in Birmingham IIRC.
Get the facts straight
The OS was compatible with some Windows drivers, but Windows 3.x did so well that the IBM/Microsoft partnership dissolved in unhappy circumstances in 1992.
I'm not sure what the first phrase is supposed to mean because OS/2 required its own drivers for all hardware. One of the reasons Windows 3.x did so well was that large companies could run Windows 3.x applications in OS/2 with more memory and fewer crashes, because each application effectively got its own VM. OS/2 pioneered software virtualisation. But the reason why the partnership between IBM and Microsoft was dissolved was that Microsoft was working on a competing OS called Windows NT. Outsourcing the development of OS/2 to Microsoft was a terrible decision and indicative of IBM's management at the time.
I was always told the reason why it could not be opensourced was that a lot of the source files are "Copyright IBM, Microsoft" and that getting the two teams of lawyers to agree to anything like that would be, shall we say tricky.
Ran a handful of Lotus Notes servers on OS/2. The only time they had to be rebooted was when we upgraded the hardware. Or installed a TCP/IP stack (yes, you licensed TCP/IP separately). For some reason I have Statuesque by Sleeper playing in my mind.