OS/2 Warp Version 4

The fourth major release of the client version of the OS/2 operating system and also known as Warp 4 or under the original project name Merlin. It is not as radical a change as OS/2 Warp Version 3 was from OS/2 Version 2 mainly because the money earmarked for OS/2 development inside IBM's Personal Systems Division was used to develop the ill-fated OS/2 PPC, and while small portions of the OS/2 PPC code showed up in Merlin, most of the changes were superficial. The release does include a number of additional features that were developed as separate programs though, such as OpenGL support.

Minor versions
IBM released versions 4.5 for those with a defect support contract and for a time also sold it as an upgrade. This has numerous fixes and updates introduced in OS/2 Warp Server for e-business, and a small number of fixes developed since. The last minor version released was 4.52.

Development Tools
The base operating system contains: Inside DOS sessions the following tools are available:
 * Object REXX and SAA REXX
 * IBM Linker: LINK.EXE LINK386.EXE
 * IBM Resource Compiler: RC.EXE, RCPP.EXE
 * DEBUG
 * QBasic

Books

 * Getting to Know OS/2 Warp 4 – Prentice-Hall 1996, ISBN 0-13-842147-1

Articles

 * Cathy Longenberger: Inside the Next Release of OS/2 Warp - DevCon News Vol. 11
 * Edward Duhe, Rene Gracia, Kathy Hutchison & Tony White: OS/2 Warp 4: Best on the Planet - Personal Systems Magazine Nov/Dec 1996
 * Brian Proffit: OS/2 Warp 4.0 - From PC Magazine September 1996.
 * Reviews
 * Esther Schindler: Review: OS/2 addresses some old flaws on the desktop - ComputerWorld Magazine (Nov 1996)

Links

 * OS/2 Withdrawal from Marketing and Change in Support