OS/2
Fewer than 5 people recommend it so far, so there's no written verdict. Here is what commenters said.
3recommend
2warn against
Nov 19, 2025first mention
Oct 3, 2026latest mention
Why people recommend it
“I found it more useful than Windows 3.1 on the same hardware, because it could reliably run a serial modem download in the background while I did word processing.”
“I ran OS/2 2.0 on them both.”
Used OS/2 2.0 on 386SX laptops around 1992on “GentleOS – Classic operating system with a lovely re…”
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“paid for the first couple (2.0 and 2.1) with my own cash”
“I used to love OS/2 back when developing DOS applications”
Caveats and dissent
“I have very little desire to look back to those days.”
former Iomega support worker, now a web developeron “Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux”
“I'll skip our brief foray into the dead end that was OS/2 2.0”
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“OS/2 1.x was cripped by being a 286 OS, it flopped”
Often compared with
Who recommends it in their own words
Threads where it came up
- GentleOS – Classic operating system with a lovely retro GUI 3 mentions
- ArcaOS 5.1.2 (based on OS/2 Warp 4.52) now available 2 mentions
- cp: -r or -R? 1 mention
- Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber 1 mention
- Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux 1 mention
- Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains 1 mention
Data: os-2.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 11
“But even earlier, OS/2 1.x had a proper DosCopy() system call.”
Popular claim by IBM PR, but the issue was that OS2fW component (which reused locally-installed Windows 3.x) had binary patches it applied to windows core component to turn it from DPMI host (which owns 32bit pagetable etc.) into DPMI client so that Windows would call to OS/2 for handling paging setup, and other details of interop. The patches were made for Windows 3.1, but not for Windows 3.11 - since the changes re
“I still run OS/2 today.”
“I found it more useful than Windows 3.1 on the same hardware, because it could reliably run a serial modem download in the background while I did word processing.”
“I ran OS/2 2.0 on them both.”
“I have very little desire to look back to those days.”
“when I used OS/2”
“paid for the first couple (2.0 and 2.1) with my own cash”
“I used to love OS/2 back when developing DOS applications”
“I'll skip our brief foray into the dead end that was OS/2 2.0”
“OS/2 1.x was cripped by being a 286 OS, it flopped”