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Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

typewritten.org

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Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#31

Post by jll29 »

My favorites:

GEM + Ventura Publisher http://www.typewritten.org/Media/Images/ventura-publisher-1....

Viewpoint http://www.typewritten.org/Media/Images/6085-viewpoint-2.0-p...

AUX http://www.typewritten.org/Media/Images/aux-3.0.1.png

It's suprising at first look that GEM tops my preferences but I recall having a very fond time on the Atari ST 520+. It had one of the best b/w monitors and TOS+GEM was orderly and uncluttered.

Only preemptive multitasking and per-window menus were missing. As a plus, the OS was in ROM, so boot times were <1s.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#32

Post by bronlund »

I can't help thinking about how much we have lost. Just finding the scrollbar nowadays can be a challenge. Not to mention if you want to resize a pane - in some applications they seem to have taken extra steps to make it difficult to find the line to grab.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#33

Post by darkwater »

yread wrote: post #21
darkwater wrote: post #19

Let's talk about the HP-9000 as depicted in http://www.typewritten.org/Media/Images/hpwindows-starbase-u... There is a `man` entry displayed in a terminal window there. The first Unix I've ever touched was HP-UX on an HP-9000 (server series, not the workstation one), and I have this memory that the underlined words you can see in that manpage as well were actually hyperlinks you can select and would bring you to the…

I thought only `info` had hyperlinks

In the GNU world, indeed. And that's why it makes even harder for me to remember exactly, it was 30 years ago, I was clueless and also Linux was already "big enough" to have some Red Hat installed in some x86 PC in the same lab.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#34

Post by jll29 »

darkwater wrote: post #19

Let's talk about the HP-9000 as depicted in http://www.typewritten.org/Media/Images/hpwindows-starbase-u... There is a `man` entry displayed in a terminal window there. The first Unix I've ever touched was HP-UX on an HP-9000 (server series, not the workstation one), and I have this memory that the underlined words you can see in that manpage as well were actually hyperlinks you can select and would bring you to the…

I started with HP-UX 9.03 on a PA-RISC-powered 715-75 (to use Emacs, our whole research group logged into the 735 server to edit there, which was faster than running it locally).

Any unclean pointer fiddling in C, and the process was terminated by the OS, so the machine was wonderful to use as a development box (especially with Purify installed) for software that would later be run on Windows or Linux.

I eventually bought my own refurbished (and using academic discount) 715 (instead of a car), so I had the fastest machine in our student dorm of anyone I knew, undergrad, grad student or professor. I could just write my Master's thesis when everyone else kept re-installing Windows - the HP never crashed in 6.5 years, which has left me with deep respect for the old-schol (pre-Compaq) HP engineers. The machine (21" color CRT) occupied half of my 9 square metre dorm room, but it also kept me warm.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#38

Post by repelsteeltje »

pedrogpimenta wrote: post #23

This is like porn for me :) It's one of my favourite things, looking at and analyzing older interfaces. Some are lovely, some are cute, some are ugly, but most are... "naïve"? I love to think about the effort, the research, the trials and tribulations. I feel I will spend a great deal of time in this page!

> [..] lovely [..] cute [..] ugly [..] naive...

First and foremost to me those screenshots are somewhat disappointing as they can't match my memories. NeXT, BeOS, Irix, OpenLook, SunOS, Arthur (imagine the diversity)... they were SO awesomely impressive at insanely high multi-sync CRT resolution.

Reality simply can't match the mind's eye, at least not for me.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#39

Post by sthuck »

I kinda miss that in the early 2000's kde and gnome shipped with a fuck ton of window decorations based on all those (then-not-so) old OS. Teenager me had fun switching them every day and playing with windowing behavior (focus follows mouse! hover to select and only one click needed!). I wonder what techy kids today do to explore and have fun.

Speaking of the early 2000's, man, Aqua was such a good design. I appreciate the nextstep paradigm and design, but Aqua was just so futuristic, in a good way.

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