ViewMAX or GEM. Both from Digital Research.
I remember OS/2 by IBM which looked like Windows 3.11, and OS/2 Warp which looked like Windows 95. There were probably others.
DOS Shell was something like that. Not much in the way of functionality, but it was graphical…ish.
The first computer my dad bought, back in the late '80s, was mostly a DOS machine that also came with a mouse-driven GUI called GEM.
I don’t know if it ran on top of DOS, though. It booted directly from its own set of disks.
A great resource when looking for older GUI shells/OS’s is Toastytech: http://toastytech.com/guis/index.html
Lots of info and screenshots to browse through there. And if you don’t find what you’re looking for you might find something else that’s interesting :)
Is there a specific screenshot you’re thinking of?
No, I figured if I could recall the name I could get a nostalgic fix by searching it. I found this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview
I recall DESQview was much lighter weight and better performing than Windows, but had limitations. I did not recall that the windows were text only within, but that’s starting to fill some holes in my memory.
You may be thinking of DesqViewX:
https://lunduke.substack.com/p/desqviewx-the-forgotten-mid-1990s
Edit for a little personal anecdote: ran a 2-line (2400, then later 14.4k) WWIV BBS under this on a 386sx in the 90s. What an awesome time that was.
DOS Shell?
You might be talking about the DOS Shell. A pseudo graphical file managerm shipped with DOS.
q. name one ‘os’ that sucked donkey balls getting a functional tcp/ip stack runnin’
In those days, DOS was the OS. Windows and DESQview were just window manager apps that ran other apps.
hence the single quotes… i was just pullin a jeopardy
Haha
Oh Trumpet something… The hell of getting a stack back then
WinSock Trumpet (yea, that was on Win 3.1)
