1mck,
your dream OS exists...
Mac OS X
as for OS/2, it was my first venture into computing without Microsoft. It was back when I was running a 486/33 and I put Win95 on it... my God what a slow ass bastard that was. It's faster to run XP Pro inside Virtual PC 5 on a G3.
So, I got a copy of OS/2 2.0 from the neighbor's dad, who was a sysadmin for Axiom in central Arkansas. I liked it, but now that I look back on it... it was a junky thing. Sure, it was stable, and I liked the UI, but, Christ... it was really just 32-bit Windows 3.1 on top of 32-bit DOS.
Then I upgraded my hardware to a cutting edge VLB board with an S3 Vision964 based card with 4 whole MB of video RAM. I stepped up in the world to 24MB of RAM, and I got a massive 650MB hard drive. Wow.
OS/2 took a shit on my HD... the installer would get as far as loading the graphics layer... the presentation manager, whatever you wanna call it... and DUBLOOO! it was dead.
So... I broke out the 95 CD. And I was pleased with the performance and stability... it wasn't that different from OS/2... and so I foolishly stayed with Windows. All the money I spend upgrading and chasing OS versions could have gotten me a Power Mac 8600 back when they were the shit.
It wasn't until summer of '01 that I was able to escape the shackles of MS and got me an iMac. I bought OS X 10.1 and I haven't looked back.
My name is The Jimmy James... and no, that wasn't just a really long Switch ad. lol
[ September 28, 2002: Message edited by: The Jimmy James ]