IBM to discontinue its OS/2 Operating System

IBM to discontinue its OS/2 Operating System

An era is coming to an end. The Operating System that could once have taken on the Microsoft’s Windows Operating System but failed to succeed due to lack of applications written for it, OS/2 is going to be discontinued by IBM. The company has announced that they would stop selling the Operating System by the end of the current year. They also said the support for the current customer would continue only until Dec. 31, 2006.

Companies can of course continue to ask for support after that time under a special service contract with the company. Steve Eisenstadt, an IBM representative said in statement: “We’re making official what has been going on for quite some time. We haven’t released a new version of OS/2 in nine years.” The company wants their customers to move onto the next best thing to have happened in the Operating System market, Linux.

IBM has continued to contribute to this open source effort and is encouraging users to move onto this Operating System, which is giving Microsoft a hard time in the server market. On the desktop front, Linux still has not managed to attract the attention of the common PC user. IBM introduced the OS/2 way back in 1987 when the PC market was in its infancy. It was considered to be technically superior to the versions of Windows Operating System available in those days but IBM could not get it to become as popular as the competing OS in Windows became.

It also holds the distinction of being the first Intel-based 32-bit multitasking operating system aimed at the PC market.