An earlier operating system for IBM personal computers jointly developed by Microsoft and IBM. OS/2 Warp and Warp Server were the client and server versions. With add-ons, DOS and Windows applications also ran (see
Odin). Like DOS and Windows, OS/2 provided a command line interface. The server version included a journaling file system (JFS) like IBM's Unix (see
AIX). See
OS/2 Warp,
Warp Server and
eComStation.
Highly regarded, OS/2 never became widely used. It survived for a while in the European banking industry and U.S. ATM machines due to its stability.
Features
OS/2 included Adobe Type Manager for Type 1 fonts on screen and PostScript output on non-PostScript printers. Dual boot allowed booting into OS/2 or DOS. See
Type 1 font.
OS/2's "Workplace Shell" user interface was similar to Windows and Mac. Originally known as Presentation Manager (PM), after Version 2.0, PM referred to the programming interface (API), not the GUI. See
OS/2 versions.