I'm not sure how much it matters if the "idea" of running os/2 in vm's has been in existence since 2000 ... what comes together right now, in just the past few years, is lots of technology ... new/improved:
- hardware: faster cpu's with more cores, lots of ram, super-fast ssd's ... all on one inexpensive machine
- software: virtualization, winflector
If you use os/2, and want to do more with it than running native, more tools in the toolbox gives us options right now. We can do things that weren't available back then:
- virtualbox lets us run multiple vm's on one machine, introducing new ways to use os/2
- winflector lets us run any 64-bit app right now inside of os/2, vs waiting for that browser to come along, or waiting for that port to finish.
- existing os/2 developers can use these new tools in the toolbox to speed up os/2 development right now
- new os/2 developers aren't running constrained on one box, trying to shoehorn everything into 4gb ram on a 32gb machine ... they can expand immediately into more vm's doing more work for them. If we give them a highly tuned dev vm, they can run two or more, alongside their os/2 desktop vm, compiling in some and testing in others.
And, yes ... consumers (all the rest of us) can explore os/2 among many other os's, which shouldn't necessarily kill off os/2. It might expand the pool of folks who find, play with, and come to love os/2 anew:
- os/2 runs perfectly in a vm, yet runs with all kinds of problems natively ... run it in a vm, and you are instantly in business, alongside all your other efforts, on one machine
- explore all the old os/2 (or dos, or win) apps, and perhaps find new ways to bring them back into production ... if it runs in a vm, it's no longer tied to any new hardware/software that forces many os's or apps into retirement.
I respect folks that want to run native ... please do so, if that is your thing.
But adding more tools to the toolbox shouldn't be a bad thing, because who knows what the next generation of os/2 users will do with them. New users might become new developers.
os/2 might be dead (to me) if I hadn't played with it again in the past few years, discovered new tools to resolve all the current issues in this forum, and gotten it to the point where I have time now to explore all the new things I can now do with it, vs fighting it to resolve all its native problems.
progress should be happening on all fronts ...