On Sunday September 19 1999 at 07:31, Frits Spieker wrote to All:

 FS> It is time to begin and have a serious look at alternative OS's to
 FS> use in the near future. Although OS/2 still does what it is supposed
 FS> to do (and good at that too!), it is falling further behind by the
 FS> day.

I agree.  OS/2 works fine, and will continue to work fine, on '94-era
hardware.  Unfortunately, '94-era hardware is rather hard to come by these
days.  Sure, it still works with modern hard drives, CDROMs, keyboards, mice
(most of them, at least) and floppy drives.  But on the other hand, finding
supported sound and video hardware very difficult at best.  And forget about
support for any of the new and interesting devices such as Firewire DASD and
portable MP3 players.

I've been looking at alternative OSes for some time now, and generally
speaking, I can only see two: Linux and WinNT.

Linux is in the same position as OS/2 was in the months before Win95's
release; it is gaining momentum and support (both in terms of hardware and
software).  With Win2000 just around the corner, I am concerned that Linux may 
repeat history and suffer the same fate as OS/2 Warp 3 suffered when Win95 was 
released.

In some ways Linux is a step backwards from OS/2.  For example, the one of
best ways to run WIN3.1 apps under Linux is to install WinOS2 (!) inside
DOSEMU.  While improving, Linux's legacy software support (DOS/WIN3.1) leaves
much to be desired--and Linux applications don't exist in large enough numbers 
for legacy support to be irrelevant.

WinNT has its own drawbacks: hardware requirements, price, questionable
hardware support for non server-grade equipment, poor legacy DOS support
(forget DOS games...) and the fact that it's sold by Microsoft.  Not to
mention that WinNT is on the verge of being obsoleted by Win2000.

Basically speaking, anyone who wants full hardware and software support must
buy Windows 9X.  I'm not going to stoop that low unless I have no other
choice.

My poison, you ask?  If Mandrake Linux doesn't work out, I'll be forced to
switch to NT.  :-(

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