The 2023 Project: Documenting OS/2 (Patreon)

So, I've been mulling a fair bit about where I want to take the channel in 2023, especially since we've essentially been drifting in the off season. I originally planned on doing a port of one of the major Linux distributions, but, as I was doing the New Years stream, I had an idea to try to finally tackle documenting the decline and failure of OS/2, which was pretty much a pivotable moment for the world, and one I think hasn't been studied in depth at all.

Over the last two days, I've started writing a page on the wiki: https://restless.systems/wiki/OS/2_Research_and_Discovery_Documentary

Due to its relative unpopularity, there's very little in terms of primary sources for the very early versions of OS/2 were developed jointly with Microsoft, and mostly only anecdotal accounts of the later versions. As such, if I want to attempt to make any objective statements on the failure of OS/2, I'm going to have to do the research, and document everything I find along the way.

I'm not quite ready to call this the start of Season 2. My ability to make a video (realtime or otherwise) basically depends how much I can break it down, and the OS/2 story is immense. That said, even a few short videos covering the 16-bit era, and perhaps Hello World through the ages would have immense value.

I'm not quite sure when this is going to start. At the moment, I'm spending a fair bit of time doing a fairly overdue revision of the rules, and mod team stuff on the Discord. The server has been growing rapidly (we're past 1.1k members!), and I want to make sure no one gets overwhelmed. I'm hoping to at least have a bulk of the work done this week.

I'm also going to do some test streams at 4K. I do want to mix in a little variety in my content, if only to help with cases of burnout. One of my self-set goals for 2022 was to finish the last goals in my Dungeons, Dragons, and Space Ships Modded Minecraft world. While I got closer (such as getting the Creative Fluid Tank), I didn't manage to reach the end. So, I'll probably end up doing some of that in 2023 on air.

I can't say I know exactly where we're going, but I do think we're going to find a lot of interesting things along the way ...