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OS/2 had true preemptive multitasking, which couldn't be matched on Windows systems until Windows 95. Far from worthless garbage, it was one of the only systems available that could do true multi-tasking on cheap PCs, at least until 95.

I used OS/2 Warp to run a 2 node BBS on one PC in 94-95 time frame. The only other OS (that I'm aware of) which had that capability was DESQview¹ and that lacked any sort of GUI.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview



There were many available in that timescale.

QNX DR Concurrent CPM which became Concurrent DOS DR FlexOS PC-MOS

I seem to recall seeing a few others advertised in magazines at the time.

As to DESQview, it had DESQview/X as an addition.

As to unique bits, what OS/2 had was memory protection, but then so did QNX and FlexOS, I'm not sure about PC-MOS.


Windows NT 3.1 which shipped in July 1993 supported preemptive multitasking.




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