OSes Historical OS desktop environments (pictures)

[majorbloodnok]

…
What Microsoft and IBM did was start a path of standards.
…

Microsoft yes, IBM not so much.

Exactly what you say about Apple and proprietary kit is true and I dislike that too. However in the PC world Compaq and IBM were two of the biggest culprits for trying that themselves. They failed, however, because they didn’t have the critical mass to force the issue. That too was a good thing.

 

[Second Summer]

I stumbled upon a YT video about GEM, and was reminded of this thread - it relates to what I said in my first bullet point in post #5 about Apple suing Digital Research:

I have to say I enjoy the aesthetic of GEM, and I think I would have preferred it to the early MS Windows versions, running on top of DOS. I'm even tempted to try and install it in a virtual machine. I wonder what it could have been like now if it had been maintained and developed further.

 

[Second Summer]

Thanks for posting that interesting article! I love computer history and I recognized several of those having run both OS/2 and Linux in the past.

I've come across another site with screenshots from a plethora of desktop environments and GUIs, including OS/2:

IBM OS/2 Warp 4

toastytech.com

Use the menu on the left to see others, such as BeOS, Irix, Amiga Workbench, AmigaOS, lots of Apple and various Xerox GUIs, and so on and so forth. It's a really impressive collection.

 

[Deleted member 20024]

They have screenshots of Solaris 11 - that's still downloadable AFAIK. Looks fascinating.

 

[hitty]

OpenGEM - Opendawn

OpenGEM is a non-multitasking 16-bit graphical user interface (GUI) for DOS. It is an extended distribution of FreeGEM that includes features of the original Digital Research GEM. OpenGEM is intended to provide a simple to install and use GUI system and windowing framework for the FreeDOS...

www.opendawn.com

Beauty!

And freedos, still in active development

 

[Second Summer]

A review (with screenshots) of some old X11 window managers:

Picking the right (archaic) Window Manager | datagubbe.se

I remember struggling with FVWM back in the day and swearing I would stop using it as soon as I had an alternative. The above review is very favourable to it, though!

These days I use XFCE4 - which is a desktop environment rather than just a window manager - which still gives great, comforting retro vibes. They're also working on Wayland support, which is good since the future of X11 is somewhat uncertain now.