[HN Gopher] GeoWorks: The Other "Windows"
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GeoWorks: The Other "Windows"
Author : janandonly
Score : 117 points
Date : 2021-12-01 10:56 UTC (1 days ago)
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| rdp36 wrote:
| I loved my HP Omnigo
| http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=200
|
| I should look for one to buy...
| xattt wrote:
| Why were so many window managers dependent on DOS back then? I
| get the impression that developers were stuck in a paradigm that
| using x86 meant the use of some form of DOS as a back-end.
|
| Contrast to today, and there's a post on HN every other week
| about implementing some hobby OS.
| a-dub wrote:
| > Why were so many window managers dependent on DOS back then?
| I get the impression that developers were stuck in a paradigm
| that using x86 meant the use of some form of DOS as a back-end.
|
| because that's all there was. sure there was crap like xenix
| and sco and later bsdi, and bespoke things like mwc coherent
| but nobody actually used any of those things really.
|
| when i was in high school i recycled an old 386 pc from the
| local university and set it up with linux and ip masquerade so
| that a single dial-up internet connection could be shared by a
| whole school computer lab. some rich kid's dad somehow got to
| take it home and then somehow got my phone number and then
| called me very angrily because i wouldn't tell him how to get
| out of this linux thing and so he could "drop to dos."
|
| most people didn't understand the idea of operating systems
| back then, dos and pcs were one and the same for most people.
| the idea that you could do something to your computer that
| would make it unable to run "pc compatible" software that you
| buy in boxes at the store was just utterly befuddling for the
| vast majority of pc users.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Because DOS already did everything reliably and in a way that
| the users expect. If your window manager had any behaviour
| slightly different from DOS - such as using the current
| timestamp when copying a file - then users would notice and
| complain. That was a very long trail of behaviours to copy.
|
| Or just rely on DOS.
| simonh wrote:
| GEOS didn't really rely on DOS, it just used it as a launcher
| and for some basic I/O for compatibility's sake. It would have
| been trivial to cut loose from it, but why bother? Customers
| would just have worried that it wouldn't run on their 'DOS'
| computers.
| dfox wrote:
| Essentially all DOS graphical extensions used DOS for
| filesystem implementation, including GEOS, and more notably
| Windows before the 3.1 (3.1 had user option in control panel
| to use Windows-native FAT implementation) and 9x (which could
| use DOS drivers essentially transparently, but primarily as a
| fallback).
|
| In fact, most 90's DOS software used DOS only for the FS
| access and maybe print spooling with every other kind of
| hardware being accessed directly.
| simonh wrote:
| True, file system compatibility is a really big deal.
| bluedino wrote:
| There were DOS clones and other operating systems back then.
| CP/M, DR-DOS (take a look at VIEWMAX), PC-MOS, VM/386...
|
| Part of the problem was you needed to get your OS on all the
| computers out there, most clone builders had agreements with
| Microsoft. The other was you needed DOS compatibility, or else
| you didn't have any software to run.
| coldacid wrote:
| I wouldn't call CP/M and DR-DOS "clones" of MS-DOS. It's more
| the other way around: MS-DOS originated as a x86 clone of
| CP/M!
| bluedino wrote:
| I meant dos clones and other operating systems
| akoster wrote:
| It was neat to play with in a VM using the (quasi-legal) copy
| from WinWorld [1] as well as its derivatives Breadbox Ensemble
| [2] and New Deal Office [3].
|
| [1] https://winworldpc.com/product/geos/2x
|
| [2] https://winworldpc.com/product/breadbox-ensemble/4
|
| [3] https://winworldpc.com/product/new-deal-office/2000
| simonh wrote:
| And then there was GEM, the other 'other' windows. I worked for a
| year doing PC support for a local health authority here in the UK
| in 1989 and a few of the secretaries used GEM.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEM_(desktop_environment)
| weinzierl wrote:
| _"GEOS did not pioneer the GUI; most of its features were already
| present in the larger OSes of the day, like the classic Mac
| (albeit, not Windows). What GEOS did show is that cheap, low-
| power, commodity hardware and simple office productivity software
| worked. You did not need a $2000 machine to type a simple letter
| and print it."_
|
| To me, GEOS was a tech demo - an incredible tech demo - but I did
| not, and don't know anyone, who ever used it productively. Not
| even to type a simple letter and print it. There were much more
| efficient ways to do that.
|
| My caveat is that I say this from the _" cheap, low-power,
| commodity hardware"_ home computer perspective. That GEOS ran on
| my C64 was mind-blowing, but not particularly useful.
| svachalek wrote:
| Likewise, I used it for letters and school papers. Its time was
| brief but it was fully functional, not just a demo.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I did not, and don 't know anyone, who ever used it
| productively. Not even to type a simple letter and print it.
| There were much more efficient ways to do that._
|
| I knew an east coast limousine company that ran its whole
| business on it.
| themadturk wrote:
| See my other comment; it was highly usable and I was productive
| with it creating newsletters.
| gilmore606 wrote:
| I did! At age 14 I used it to make newsletters for my church.
| It was a big step up for me from Newsroom, which could only
| layout in a 2x3 grid -- I could finally do WYSIWYG column-flows
| with embedded clip art!
|
| GeOS felt like the future to me, because it was (or seemed to
| be) treating the screen as an arbitrary pixel grid, free from
| the constraints of a 40x24 char array and 8 sprites.
| azinman2 wrote:
| All of the sudden HN seems to be getting a ton of articles and
| Wikipedia links to all things DOS these days. Just a fervor of
| nostalgia?
| detaro wrote:
| And people seeing one post and being remembered of other,
| related things, and submitting them (or mentioning them in
| comments and then someone else thinks they are worth submitting
| on their own). You often get topic clusters that way.
| gorkish wrote:
| Sorry, we accidentally left you off of the #DOScember memo, but
| yes it's been a thing for a few years.
| notacoward wrote:
| Related: Atari GEM (1985)
|
| https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue60/175_1_GEM_A_N...
| drclau wrote:
| GEM came with my first PC-XT, 8086 8MHz (or maybe it was even
| 8088, not sure), 640KB RAM, 20MB HDD, 5.25" floppy, monochrome
| display etc. It worked on top of DOS.
|
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEM_(desktop_environment)
| kabdib wrote:
| GeoWorks was one of the (very small) set of windowing systems
| we looked at for the Atari ST.
|
| This was only a month after Atari was bought, and the folks
| from Commodore were running things without consulting us "old
| Atari" types (establishing trust took a few months). There were
| no slam dunks; every windowing system had its drawbacks. I
| remember reading a bunch of documentation and not being
| impressed by _anything_ commercially available.
| coldacid wrote:
| More competitor than simply related. At least on the PC front.
| notacoward wrote:
| Isn't competition a kind of relationship? I kind of thought
| that anyone interested in one contemporary graphical Windows
| alternative might be interested in another. I would have
| mentioned Desqview too, but we already had a story about that
| very recently.
| coldacid wrote:
| That's why I said "simply related" in my comment.
| opless wrote:
| [OT] Lundukes writeup of desqview X
| https://lunduke.substack.com/p/desqviewx-the-forgotten-
| mid-1...
|
| Was something I aspired to acquire, but never did.
|
| Just running real-mode Win 3.1 in a window was a pretty
| awesome feat.
| einr wrote:
| Yeah, GEM from Digital Research had nothing to do with
| GEOS/GeoWorks, apart from being DOS-based graphical
| interfaces that attempted to compete with Windows.
| notacoward wrote:
| > apart from being DOS-based graphical interfaces
|
| Yeah, apart from that. "Other than that, how did you enjoy
| the play, Mrs. Lincoln?" As if someone interested in the
| history of such interfaces can even put that one into
| proper context without considering contemporary
| developments.
| andrew_ wrote:
| Oh man, nostalgia! That ran on our first home PC, and it was
| where at the age of 12 I learned what a cookie was. The days!
| api wrote:
| I played with GEOS for the Commodore 64 when I was a kid. It
| wasn't really _that_ useful on a system that tiny, but it 's an
| amazing testament to what can be done on a tiny machine by
| skilled programmers who aren't larding everything up with layers
| and layers of abstraction.
|
| The Amiga was way, way ahead of its time. Commodore is really a
| tragedy. There is a parallel universe out there somewhere where
| Commodore survived and the Amiga evolved into today's equivalent
| of the Macintosh.
|
| It just shows that the best tech does not necessarily win. In
| fact it often doesn't. Winning in the market requires a large
| confluence of factors including network effects, timing,
| availability of capital, etc. Being good helps but it doesn't
| make it for you.
| fatnoah wrote:
| I also used Geos as a kid. I played with geoPaint a lot, used
| geoPublish to make newspapers with my friend, and used geoWrite
| to do reports and papers for school. It was amazing what could
| be done in that environment.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| The PC version of GeoWorks even rocked on my souped-up IBM PC
| 5150. The display PostScript was a perfect preview of the
| printouts from my 9-pin dot matrix printer.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Sadly C64 arrived on the scene when the Amiga was launched. It
| would have been amazing if the C64 was launched with Geos and
| apps would have been written for it (An Amiga was my first
| computer with a mouse, I wrote a text windowing system for my
| Amstrad which was my first GUI).
| mattl wrote:
| Amstrad CPC?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Yes!
| mattl wrote:
| What was your program called?
| cowmix wrote:
| GeoWorks was great. This document I used to get investors for my
| ISP back in late '92 was created in GeoWorks (and printed on a
| dotmatrix printer.) Not too shabby for a 286 with 1M of RAM.
|
| https://www.dropbox.com/s/n78x5cp8na4iilq/InternetDirectIncP...
| coldacid wrote:
| It was really amazing what could be done with PC/GEOS in all
| its incarnations on even the lowest-powered of hardware. It's
| to be expected, though, considering what Berkeley Softworks
| could pull out of a C64 with classic GEOS!
| II2II wrote:
| While the C64 implementation of GEOS was an amazing example
| of working within limited constraints, I am left wondering
| how much it harmed the reputation of GEOS on other platforms.
| From my recollections, the frequent disk access on
| Commodore's notoriously slow drives resulted in a product
| that was barely usable.
|
| When I finally tried GeoWorks on a PC, I was stunned by it's
| performance and functionality. Unfortunately this was well
| past its prime since I avoided it for many years because of
| that initial experience.
| coldacid wrote:
| Disk accesses were faster with 1571 drives than 1541s, for
| sure, and having a supported RAM expansion could cut down
| on the number of accesses needed to do anything. Similarly,
| GEOS 128 got away with fewer accesses as it could make use
| of the extra RAM available (although running GEOS 64 on a
| 128 would be no better than running it on a C64).
|
| That GEOS 64 was "barely usable" was more a reflection of
| what the Commodore 64 could provide than anything else. And
| I think more people than not recognized that fact. The
| problem with PC/GEOS is that it arrived at a time when
| Microsoft was releasing Windows 3.0 and trying to strangle
| competition in that space. Had Berkeley started working on
| it much earlier and got it out the door in '88 or '89, it
| might have had better success than it did.
| BBC-vs-neolibs wrote:
| I may be mixing up timelines here, but a C64 with 1571
| and a RAM expansion (REU) would approach a cheap PC clone
| in price, so not much use if the main goal was to use
| GEOS. It's also easy to forget that PCs had 100% flicker
| free, sharp monochrome monitors (slow decay phosphor) and
| a C64 monitor or TV would flicker like hell in
| comparison.
| themadturk wrote:
| GEOS on a C64 with RAM expansion performed very nicely, as
| I remember. I found it very usable to produce computer club
| newsletters using GeoPublish for about a year in the late
| 80s. (I don't remember how big my memory expansion was, and
| I owned both a 1541 and a 1571-compatible floppy drives).
|
| Of course, at the time I was simply blown away by using
| something that looked almost as good as a Mac, so it's
| possible my experience (and my memory of it) is tainted.
| hvs wrote:
| It's an amazing feat, but man was it terrible. I just set it
| up recently on my C64 (with 2MB additional RAM, sd2iec
| drives, etc) and it was a huge pain and still barely usable.
| I lived through that era, so it's not just my inflated
| expectations distorting my view.
| kingcharles wrote:
| "What is the Internet?"
|
| Ah, for those simpler days.
| wazoox wrote:
| I remember that the Borland Office suite with Ami Pro and Quattro
| Pro was available on GEOS and worked like a charm on a low-end
| 386 :)
| Narishma wrote:
| Not Ami Pro. That was a Windows application from the very first
| version.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| MAN I'm glad you posted this...with OS/@ and DesqViewX posts, I
| kept wracking my brain trying to remember this one.
|
| It's dot-matrix 'laser quality' mode went over each line 6
| times...so wasteful, so pretty.
| pavlov wrote:
| Some interesting notes about GeoWorks' architecture in Steve
| Yegge's blog from 2008: http://steve-
| yegge.blogspot.com/2008/05/dynamic-languages-st...
|
| The whole thing was written in x86 assembly -- 15 million lines!
| And that proved its eventual downfall.
|
| Here's the quote from the post:
|
| --
|
| "OK: I went to the University of Washington and [then] I got
| hired by this company called Geoworks, doing assembly-language
| programming, and I did it for five years. To us, the Geoworkers,
| we wrote a whole operating system, the libraries, drivers, apps,
| you know: a desktop operating system in assembly. 8086 assembly!
| It wasn't even good assembly! We had four registers! [Plus the]
| si [register] if you counted, you know, if you counted 386,
| right? It was horrible.
|
| "I mean, actually we kind of liked it. It was Object-Oriented
| Assembly. It's amazing what you can talk yourself into liking,
| which is the real irony of all this. And to us, C++ was the
| ultimate in Roman decadence. I mean, it was equivalent to going
| and vomiting so you could eat more. They had IF! We had jump CX
| zero! Right? They had "Objects". Well we did too, but I mean they
| had syntax for it, right? I mean it was all just such weeniness.
| And we knew that we could outperform any compiler out there
| because at the time, we could!
|
| "So what happened? Well, they went bankrupt. Why? Now I'm
| probably disagreeing - I know for a fact that I'm disagreeing
| with every Geoworker out there. I'm the only one that holds this
| belief. But it's because we wrote fifteen million lines of 8086
| assembly language. We had really good tools, world class tools:
| trust me, you need 'em. But at some point, man...
|
| "The problem is, picture an ant walking across your garage floor,
| trying to make a straight line of it. It ain't gonna make a
| straight line. And you know this because you have perspective.
| You can see the ant walking around, going hee hee hee, look at
| him locally optimize for that rock, and now he's going off this
| way, right?
|
| "This is what we were, when we were writing this giant assembly-
| language system. Because what happened was, Microsoft eventually
| released a platform for mobile devices that was much faster than
| ours. OK? And I started going in with my debugger, going, what?
| What is up with this? This rendering is just really slow, it's
| like sluggish, you know. And I went in and found out that some
| title bar was getting rendered 140 times every time you refreshed
| the screen. It wasn't just the title bar. Everything was getting
| called multiple times.
|
| "Because we couldn't see how the system worked anymore!
|
| "Small systems are not only easier to optimize, they're possible
| to optimize. And I mean globally optimize."
|
| --
| mseepgood wrote:
| Applications were also written in GEOS Object C (GOC), which
| was a C preprocessor that added object-oriented features to C
| (similar to Objective C or early C++).
|
| Example:
| https://github.com/bluewaysw/pcgeos/blob/master/Appl/GPCMail...
| a-dub wrote:
| the geos version of aol was pretty brilliant for its time.
| prodigy technically predated it, but prodigy looked like crap
| (think bloomberg terminal) while early aol was all geos.
|
| i think i had a discounted early adopter "charter membership" for
| aol... shame it didn't come with stock.
| davidgerard wrote:
| I used GeoWorks in a job in 1994, on a 386sx, I forget how much
| RAM. It was excellent, thoroughly up to the task!
|
| ... except it crashed at the drop of a hat, multiple times a day.
| Most annoying.
|
| They wouldn't spring the whole $45? for a Windows 3 license.
|
| Should try the open source version, and see how 27 years'
| memories hold up - probably badly.
| InTheArena wrote:
| I loved geoworks. It would scream on my 386SX with 40mb hard
| disk. It was a joy to use.
|
| It taught me a valuable life lesson that I still return to.
| Watching a clearly superior platform be destroyed by inferior
| technology, but superior business savvy (and shady ethics) taught
| me that sometimes the better technology looses, and that life
| isn't fair.
| dmead wrote:
| I'm not surprised at the sun workstation requirement. All those
| screenshots reminded me of CDE. Was it just repackaged Solaris
| stuff?
|
| Edit. The answer is yes.
| jhbadger wrote:
| No, but it was licensed Motif (the widget set that CDE used).
| GeoWorks was excellent at what we would call "themes". The
| released versions allowed the user to choose widgets that
| either looked like early Microsoft Windows or Motif. And there
| were screenshots of unreleased builds that allowed Macintosh
| and NextStep theming as well, but these weren't shipped
| (probably over fears of their legality).
| coldacid wrote:
| PC/GEOS took the Motif appearance, but I'm pretty certain that
| it didn't include the actual Motif toolkit. The source was
| essentially all hand-tuned x86 assembly. It would have been
| impossible to simply repackage anything from SunOS (Solaris
| didn't exist yet).
| notacoward wrote:
| Seems very unlikely, at least until near the end of the
| product's lifetime. CDE and the underlying infrastructure were
| implemented in network-oriented and not-very-efficient ways
| that would not have been very compatible with contemporary PCs
| let alone the C64 where GEOS started. The SunOS (not Solaris
| yet) build requirement was a different reflection of that
| capability gap, similar to why I had to use a PC to develop
| software for an even less powerful Apple IIgs at around the
| same time. The _appearance_ might have been similar, perhaps
| even deliberately, but copying the implementation would not
| have been a route to even the minimal success they had.
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(page generated 2021-12-02 23:02 UTC)