Well, Actually they are right: the supplier of the CD-ROM drive should have supplied an OS/2 driver. It's like that in the current graphics world too. Intel supplies linux drivers by making sure the opensource drivers work. Nvidia delivers binary drivers, and AMD delivers binary, and makes sure that the opensource drivers work.
Well, IBM told me to use Windows--and I had no trouble with the off-the-shelf IDE CD-ROM (not SCSI, not custom) drive under Windows at the time. That wasn't the only limit to the hardware OS/2 didn't support, either, just the one that I remember most because it was so ridiculous. Nobody comes close to supporting hardware like Microsoft--as I mentioned, IBM should have *paid* for the requisite driver support, paid to port applications & games to OS/2 *if* IBM really wanted to challenge Windows for OS primacy. But, they didn't really mean it...at least, they simply were not going to go head to head with Microsoft on OS R&D. So, OS/2 shriveled up and blew away...
At that time IBM and Microsoft had a deal to develop OS/2 together. Microsoft had a habbit of stabbing partners in the back, so they went and developed NT, and made sure that IBM was not able to run Windows software by sueing them over the para virtualisation replacement IBM made to be able to run Windows in OS/2 protected mode. In the mean time Microsoft could just use everything IBM thought of for OS/2.
Eh? The Windows virtualization in OS/2 was its *downfall*...that's what made it suck so hard, imo. After MS & IBM split their differences and went their separate ways, IBM began relying far too heavily on Win3.1 emulation *instead* of doing what I thought they should have done...make a clean break and pay to port what they needed to port to OS/2. Emulating Windows was a *bad* idea because it worked the reverse of what IBM thought...instead of convincing people they didn't need Windows, it convinced them they didn't need OS/2...;) Emulators frequently work exactly that way--no emulation is better than that which it seeks to emulate.
In the end I am glad OS/2 did not make it. Although it probably still is better than windows 8, if IBM would have had success with OS/2, they would not have invested time in linux.
Now there is just one common "enemy" with still a lot of anti-competition lawsuits, and one common linux in which about every company is investing.
IBM invested time & money into Linux because much of it was a freebie, remember. OS/2 cost a lot more money and time to develop--just like Windows. If you want to build a global desktop OS to beat Windows you'll have to really invest the money--Linux just won't do, open-source development is far too insecure and slow for a global commercial *desktop* OS. For specialty servers and custom networks, Linux is very nice indeed. Still, even there, Windows is tough competition even though it frequently is more expensive. As a competitor to Windows on the global desktop, however, it's a poor substitute by any measure. Heck, even now OpenGL races to keep stride with D3d, and its a race OpenGL has yet to win...
Just my two cents...;) This is something that I doubt either of us wants to debate to infinity...!...:D
