GeoWorks - The Windows 3.0 Alternative from 1990 (Installation & Demo)
● Liked this video? Subscribe for more: mjd.yt/subscribe
Today we're traveling back to 1990 to take a look at GeoWorks. This is an operating environment, just like Windows 3.0, but has some features that Windows doesn't. Let's take a look!
● Gear I use to make these videos: www.kit.co/mjd
Camera: amzn.to/2K5ia3D
Tripod (mine is discontinued): amzn.to/2IcI6YM
Smaller Tripod: amzn.to/2UfLAk9
Microphone: amzn.to/2XrmZdb
Editing Software (Premiere): amzn.to/2uKtrvN
Thumbnail Editor (Photoshop): amzn.to/2WRxvqj
● Affiliate Links
Get a FREE 30-DAY TRIAL of Amazon Prime: amzn.to/2xVmMB3
Get 2 FREE Audiobooks with Audible: amzn.to/2Ovylse
Amazon: www.amazon.com/?tag=teammjd-20
● Follow Me:
Twitter: / mjdtweets
Instagram: / mjdmichael
Facebook: / mjdmichael
● Music/Credits:
Background Music: www.incompetech.com & KZhead Audio Library
Mining by Moonlight by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
Airport Lounge - Disco Ultralounge by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-...
Artist: incompetech.com/
Dispersion Relation by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-...
Artist: incompetech.com/
Intractable by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Artist: incompetech.com/
Outro Music: Silent Partner - Bet On It
Source: KZhead Audio Library
Amazon Affiliate Notice: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. All Amazon links that I provide will use my affiliate code with Amazon.
Some materials in this video are used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, which allows "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, commenting, news reporting, teaching, and research.
#MichaelMJD #GeoWorks #Windows
Very cool to see this! I worked at GeoWorks as an intern in 1992, and wrote Poker and Black Jack that was released as part of a game pack. The reason GEOS ran so fast on limited hardware is because it was written 100% in x86 assembly language, with object-oriented extensions developed in-house. All development was done on Sun workstations tethered to an x86 PC. Unfortunately that also meant it was not the easiest platform to develop for which accounted for why it had almost no third-party software. Later on they did develop an SDK to allow development in C, and I believe GeoCalc was one of the first applications that was not written in assembly. I also worked on porting GEOS to the Casio/Tandy Zoomer PDA, and the Canon StarWriter which was a typewriter with a graphics display and ran GEOS natively.
It really needed a version of BASIC and it was a mistake I think that it didn't come with one.
Very interesting. I always wanted some kind of development tool for it "back in the day". The performance of the entire suite was just unmatched. Perfectly usable on an XT. Fantastic stuff.
@@ScottDuensing I agree. OS/2 was also great.
@@basicforge yep! Used to run that to do my DOS development. No matter how bad my code, I never brought the entire OS down! And being able to boot different versions of DOS at the same time in different windows? And use DOS hardware drivers? Madness.
@@ScottDuensing Do you do any programming?
That Windows xp lava lamp shows you that this guy's a professional.
The windows xp profile pic shows that you are a professional :)
Genius
More like windows xp professional
Lol
I hope he's installed the securitry updates.
0:22 DOS for Dominating Operating System is a genius abbreviation
Dominating Operating System DOS
OH NO still not as dominant as windows in the 90's
That means Geoworks as a Dead Operating System
GeoWorks also came on the Brother GeoBook laptop, released in 1998 as a low-cost alternative to Windows laptops of the era. It used an embedded version of the AMD 386SX processor and came with DOS and GeoWorks in ROM. It was also used by various PDAs and palmtop computers in the '90s.
Shocking theft of intellectual property. Xerox should _sue._ 😁
It was licensed they sold it with a embedded DOS to companies who wanted to make basically pre internet netbooks. They have 486 processors.
I o remember GEOS fondly. I had been a Commodore 128 user, and still have a working copy of GEOS 128 V 2.0 (at home). So naturally when our office got 386's with Windows 3.11, I rushed out to the local Comp USA (miss then lots) and bought the PC GEOS Ensemble. I installed it along side Windows and actually used GeoWrite quite a lot more than Word. You could call Windows up within GEOS,and then call another instance of GEOS from within Windows and call up Windows. Hours of mindless fun. Commodore GEOS was bundled with "Quantum Link". Not surprisingly PC GEOS was bundled with AOL. AOL used to be "PC Quantum Link". Thanks for posting.
If I remember correctly, they also made a version of GEOS for the Apple II.
I had it on a Amstrad 8086 computer when i was a kid.
I still use my apple ii virison comes on 8 disks! Thankfully i use double sided 5 1/4 disks so it only takes up 4 but my god is that a lot
Tandy Computing was the only distributor able to stand up to Microsoft's predatory business practices. I had a Tandy TRS-80 with the Geos early on and they still sold it on their PC Clones as well. But MS finally won out - after all even IBM installed windows. [ If the hardware requirements for OS/2 weren't so steep ...I bought OS/2 right when the Taiwanese memory factory burnt down and ram was going for astronomical prices, but a 200mb hard drive cost 300 bucks back then as well. ]
I think the PC GEOS really did outperform everything else at that time.
Cool video about GeoWorks. I used Breadbox Ensemble which is the successor of GeoWorks and I really liked using it. Thank you for the video.
Wow. I love how crisp the performance was! No noticable wait icon at all. Lightening quick the way nothing else looks today!
That's the beauty of assembler I am told. Which related elsewhere here is why very few developers were interested in apps for Geos.
@@creakycracker API concept was not so widespread at those days indeed. With usable API Geos would have more devs in their side.
Excellent Video! It is interesting to see an alternate DOS shell! What if in an alternate universe, GeoWorks became mainstream?
Yea that's what I wonder. It was literally superior to Windows in pretty much every way. Seems like wit worked well with DESQview too.
The best reason for running Geos over Windows was the printing! Geos supported many printers from Daisy Wheel to LaserJets with their own drivers. Geos could make the wimpiest 7 wire dot matrix output look like it was from a laser printer (if you didn't look closely and see the pin strikes). Granted it took many passes and many minutes to render but I used this feature to run Geos printouts through a copier and the recipients were not aware I didn't have a high-dollar laser printer. [Sad to see you couldn't show this feature, but USB printing won't work because of the nature of the low-level the drivers use to control the printers, but Parallel Port printers work fine. BTW if you pick Text Only instead of no printer in setup I believe the setup doesn't crash.]
That’s actually super cool. I noticed they used the same font as Mac OS for the applications, so I’m not surprised they had other typographic features like that. Your anecdote reminds me of reading people’s reception to IBM’s first variable-with typewriters :)
You continue to come up with awesome video content. Love your channel MJD
Glad you enjoy it! : )
I never did use Geo even with the C64, but I did love my OS/2. Found memories of those days. Reading print magazines without of the nonsense we see today
Definitely those magazines had almost only useful stuff without crapload of ads in comparing with today's ones.
I used GeoWorks Pro when I was a kid I was given a 386 Compaq that had GeoWork Pro installed on it.
Wow, this is so cool! I can't believe I've never actually heard of this. I gotta try it out for myself sometime!
@@zzco That's ridiculously cool!
I'm now thinking about switching from Windows 10 to Geoworks.
Must be done🤣
I’d go for it to help my internet addiction but people will think I’m mad
Great video. My hate for 1990s Microsoft is fully rekindled ... I remember playing with the API of GEOS on the C64. It was a major technical feat of Berkeley Softworks to write a GUI for the C64, and I'm sure that this technical excellence was also in Geoworks.
Keep up the great work michael
I used GeoWorks before Windows. I liked it more, but unfortunately the software went to the Microsoft side.
Software development required a Sun workstation, vs homebrew folks using visual basic on any pc box with Windows. Not surprising this never gained traction, aside from the Microsoft business tactics.
@@oldtwinsna8347 Yet the Geos folks (Berkley Software?) finally decided to just develop for mobile phones and sold the OS to a company called New Deal and then it got picked up by Breadbox Computing. The Geos platform got a web browser (dialup only) and many refinements and widgets over the years. ( I still run Breadbox on a Panasonic laptop limited to 256mb of ram.)
@@oldtwinsna8347 As Steve Ballmer said: "Developers, Developers, Developers." And he was right. You can't increase the market share if you do not support the developers. The should have shipped it with an IDE and compiler and documents about the API. But it get's worse, today it is open source under the name PC/GEOS, but if you take a look into the code on github, it's all 16-Bit assembly language. With such a code base, it's very expensive and not easy to adapt to new hardware and its new features, like the i386 offered. It's no wonder Microsoft won.
Interesting how Geoworks, OS/2 and React OS all have the resemblance of Windows though. I knew Windows is connected to DOS but I had no idea Geoworks, OS/2 and ReactOS were supposed to be connected to Dos too. Yes I am thinking on the same lines as how Mac is related to BSD and how Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, Gentoo and Red Hat are related to the Linux Kernal.
@@cabalenproductions6480 It's funny, but you're right. Windows is the most integrated OS right now. I am a huge lover of Linux and Unix. I think they are objectively better server environments. But starting with Windows XP, Microsoft became a true graphical OS rather than being an operating 'environment.' With Linux and even Mac OS, it's Unix or Linux running an operating environment on top of it. Even up until Windows 98, Windows ran on top of DOS.
Somewhere, in the world, somebody still uses this for their daily tasks.
Yep. But I dual boot emmabuntus linux to use the internet. :)
@@creakycracker cap
Wow, that takes me back! In the late 80's I was studying to become a phototypesetter and layout/paste-up artist. Used my C64 with EasyScript to type it all up and GeoPublish (limited as it was) to format it, as much as I could for my dissertations. Fun times! Thanks for posting. Very cool!
damn but geo publish was amazingly good.
I remember GeOS fondly, although we used it rarely since playing games was the primary function of our PCs that time. However I remember that the GeOS version of Tetris was the first tetris game I've ever played, in 1994. It was even lauded as better option to Windows 3.0 since it had superior fonts, at least according to an early nineties computing magazine I have stashed somewhere.... Appliances mode is also a unique feature of this operating environment: You could have the default apps on full screen with a big title bar instead window buttons, basically a modern smartphone app but with desktop features and capabilities. There supposed to be also a CD-ROM browser which had index data of popular CD titles. The breadbox versions also had a CD player app. GeOS had a very unique and professional look at the time. It's heartbreaking to see that the later breadbox versions became a pale imitation of Windows 9x.
I'll definitely mess with this in a VM at some point.
andrew982 it’s been open sourced now, it’s a great alternative to the Win3.11/MS-DOS combo, especially now people have had good luck installing it on FreeDOS as well.
Excellent review of Geoworks Michael! I would definitely enjoy further information about Breadbox.
Great video as always! :D
I loved GEOS, going all the way back to my C64. I bought my copy in 1991, and loved it. So small and with low requirements, it ran on an XT class system as well as Win 3.1 did on an 80386-33. And GEOS and AOL goes back before it was even AOL. The original C64 GEOS shipped with Quantum Online, the company which would become AOL. And their DOS windowing shell program for AOL was just a stripped down version of GEOS, which fit on a single floppy. It is a shame it never took off, and I still miss it.
Nice video. I remember computers in the stores running GeoWorks demos. I think that interface still looks nice this many years later. What is really amazing is how GEOS plus its apps ran on a Commdore 64 with 64 kilobytes total memory.
cant get enough of your videos Michael :)
I've watched a lot of your old videos, and I'm so glad you finally have noted that you can double click the corner button to close. On your Windows 3 and KDE videos you didn't mention that, and I wasn't sure if you realized or not. :)
Great video Michael, Geoworks Ensemble 1.28 was able to run on a XT 8088 up to an AT 486 in those days, no need to upgrade your hardware if you wanted to use it. I still run it occasionally in Virtualbox just for fun. I have three original boxings in my collection : a version 1.2 in German, an USA Geoworks Pro 1.2 (with Quattro Pro 1.0 (which is a dos version actually but running it in combination with Geos is very easy to do )) and a Geoworks 1.28 in Dutch. The future of Home Computing might have looked different indeed if this OS had a larger market penetration in those days.
Had it for my Commodore 64. This was great. Thanks.
My wife and I loved Geoworks and tried to push for it in our computer club and newsletter. We also used it for creating a newsletter for our writing group that went all over the US and a couple foreign countries. Sadly, Microsoft won that battle, taking some of the best features of Geoworks and putting them into Windows, eventually.
Excellent Video! It is interesting to see an alternate DOS shell! In an alternate universe, what if Geoworks was the mainstream operating system?
I really dig this operating system! I’ve never seen it. Great video!
Awesome video,Michael
Very cool and informativ video,never heard of it. I have to try it for my self. Good work
I was just thinking about geos! Great timing.
The GUI looks to be compliant with OSF Motif widget toolkit and the MWM window manager design used on many UNIX/X11 graphical operating environments during the 80's and 90's
Now onto the more important matter at hand Michael... Where’d you get that Windows XP Glitter lamp because god I will pay good money to find one 😍😍
I was thinking the exact same thing!
@@CobyTheLuckyFox Me too!
maybe a sticker?
Promo item from 2001. They do come up on eBay from time to time...
Excellent video Michael. I've seen a lot of videos talking about GeoWorks as a "Windows clone" and I think that is a misconception considering the background this environment has. I hope to see more videos about GeoWorks. Cheers from México.
Great review, thank you!!!
Very good video. I was not familiar with this graphical environment for MS-DOS. I loved how well explained the operation of GeoWorks Ensemble is in the video. It does not seem very difficult to adapt to the use of it who is used to using Windows 3.1. What's more, it offered more pre-installed applications than Windows.
Surprised to see you didn't cover BeOS already! Please do a BeOS video, it was the best of its time!
I haven't seen this is years. The print quality from this OS on a dot matrix printer at the time could not be beat. Also had OS2 Warp ... LOL Thanks for the flash back.
I love Geoworks :) I'd be happy to see you check out the newer versions of it.
I loved GeoWorks Ensemble. Ran it on my XT clone with 640KB.
I had an Emerson clone with a 10mhz CPU and DOS in ROM. Fast? Wheee Dogies!
I'm curious to see you do a video of Breadbox Ensemble, it is interesting to hear about and see less known operating environments and systems like what you covered in this video and I would enjoy seeing more like this
That was a serious blast from the past, I had forgotten all about this OS. Heck of a hidden nugget!
I really dig the motif gui.
This is *super* advanced for the time. So much better than contemporary Windows versions.
My brother and I used this a lot in the early to mid 90s when we were in high school on our 286 system we had. Windows 3.0 or 3.1 didn't run well on that system at all and regularly crashed, but GeoWorks was rock solid stable and produced surprisingly good looking documents on our dot matrix printer - even if it was very loud and super slow. And even on a 12MHz 286 with 1MB RAM and a relatively slow 40MB HDD, it was fast enough to be quite usable - again, not something you could say about Windows 3.x on the same system!
Nice video keep up the good work!
Thanks, will do!
In the mid 90's I started my career with a small computer company and they focused on business desktops. Our company owner thought keeping just to business was the way to go because of it being more profitable. But as the 90's moved on I would try to convince him that selling to the general public could be profitable too. One day he asked me a simple question: What would the average consumer need for a working desktop. Around this time the internet was really taking shape, 1996 was a good year so I responded: Get on the internet, check mail and perhaps write. Then he gave me a challenge: design a low end system that we could sell that would do just that. Enter NewDeal Office. It was basically Geoworks with a few tweaks and it ran on the simplest of hardware, and required few resources. I took our entry system, a P1 166, swapped it out with a Cyrix cpu, 4mb of ram and wallah. The only downside to these systems was that newDeal couldn't use a Win modem that was all the fad at the time, we had to stick with a hardware modem raising the costs a tad. But a few minor upgrades and a home user could be running Windows 95.. The licences for NewDeal was dirt cheap considering what Microsoft changed for both Windows and Office, a highly desirable selling point. I think we bundled it with Dr-dos for it's multi-tasking extinctions.
This software can compete with windows 95, i really like it.
Up to and maybe even including 3.11, Windows was really quite far behind all the competition. The only way Microsoft could have achieved their dominance was by anti competitive practices.
@Paul Moffat We may never know. It's something I have often wondered and given the amount of misinformation I hear, is seemingly an increasingly important question. I have come across too many people who believe and repeat inaccurate narratives of history. I find it sad when Apple and Microsoft fans readily forget the work of Standard Research Institute, Xerox, Berkley, Tandy, Digital Research, Atari, Commodore and even early Apple. All these and probably more that I forget were instrumental in the development of graphical user interfaces or had produced GUIs before Windows.
@@MrOttman001 I used a program called QuikMenu that was much more than a DOS launcher as well. (Okay I still use it on DOS to launch windows 3.11 and Geos)
@@MrOttman001 I disagree. PC/Geos was 99 % written in 16-bit assembly language. While this makes the software run fast on old hardware, the development costs on the other side are very high and when you want to adapt its code base to a new machines and its new CPU features, like the i386 brought to us, it gets much more expensive and time consuming. High development costs do also mean, that you can't sell your product competitively priced. So failure No 1 was to not use C programming language. Failure No 2 was, they didn't ship the software with developer tools. If you wanted to develop for it, you needed a very expensive setup. That way, you won't attract many developers. Microsoft did a much better job in that case, Visual Basic and Visual C for Windows was available for a few bucks and did run on the same PC. Both were 2 major failures and that's why it lost against Microsoft. It's just to easy to just say that Microsoft won because of anti competitve practice. This doesn't mean, that Microsoft didn't do such bad game, but if it wasn't the case, then IBM would have much bigger chances to win against Microsoft with their OS/2 than PC/Geos.
OH MY GOD!! I used to install that on loads of 386 pcs back then! :D
Me too! but I had an Emerson Electric XT clone with a 10mhz chip that positively smoked with Geos.
17:45 GTK library, used to build UIs in Linux applications, has this feature too. It was enabled in GIMP's menus for example. In current version of GTK this feature is deprecated and it seems to me no one uses it anymore.
This is really nice!
I worked there as an intern right during the launch of the first version. I still have my signed box.... Very nice.
I totally loved this program , so much easier to use than windows 3.0 also ran flawlessly on a 286 computer.
i used to run that geos on an old zentih data systems laptop was one of the most fun os's well that and tandy desk mate
DeskMate! I love DM. In fact I use it with Win3 and Geos on an old laptop. (I never wanted to convert my Filer and Other apps from DM)
Interesting insight into the geoworks operating system
"rather like turning it upside down" :) hope to see the video of breadbox on ensemble soon.
I remember back then, when I made my first steps trying to connect to the first mailboxes via modem. After many unsuccessfully tries with DOS I installed GEOS and it ran right out of the box.
Man! Memories. Whew! Another world. A lifetime ago. Twisting my brain up here.
Great video but you missed one very cool aspect of GEOS/GeoWorks history -- it was the UI on one of the very first PDA devices, the Tandy/Casio Zoomer. It ran GEOS + a bunch of Palm software and with a few hacks you could even get down to a DOS prompt on them. It was pretty cool.
My first computer (a Laser 286S, same company that made licensed Apple II clones) came with GeoWorks Pro. We eventually bought Windows 3.1 as well, and I always felt that GeoWorks was a much better environment. It always booted faster, ran faster, and had better built-in apps. The only problem was that GeoWorks didn't have any third-party support. Nobody really supported it and so it languished and died. Very sad, considering how far ahead of Windows they were at the time.
Nice. Back in 1992, GeoWorks was my first try at an "alternate" Desktop installed on my Tandy 1000 RX(I think it was the RX...).
Have you done any videos on DesQView or any of the other Quarterdeck software such as their popular QEMM? I did a quick search on KZhead and couldn't find any by your channel.
Ha! I loved using this back in the day. I was reminiscing about this program a few weeks ago when I was talking software with a young whipsnapper.
Geoworks = company name PC/GEOS = operating environment Geoworks Ensemble = application suite You’re right that they were occasionally used somewhat interchangeably, but they did have specific meanings. :-)
I had only seen pics of this on Toasty Tech before, so it is nice to finally see it in action. Someday I’d like to get a copy and put in on a 386, 486, or early Pentium, just to compare its performance to Windows.
I always had a soft spot for GEOS/Geoworks. I had the C64 version and later on I got the DOS version. It was nice having free office software bundled with it. On my Mac I had ClarisWorks.
I was just thinking of installing this. :D
Back in the dialup BBS era, I knew a guy who ran Geoworks on an XT. It could multitask well enough that he'd be online with AOL while it was printing invoices in the background.
Wonder how it holds up on more modern processors. It would obviously be faster than lightning but would it function properly while running faster than it was ever imagined to run.
Back then things were simpler so theoretically the programs could run faster
@@bdhale34 Geos 20 won't run on a processor over 200mhz due to the compiler used. There are workarounds, but I just run Breadbox Ensemble.
@@creakycracker Figures, not unexpected though, most things written for Pentium MMX and below do pretty bad on newer processors without emulation and possibly some tweaking.
I've watched you for so long I remember when you did time travel and was mjd7999
Yes, I would love to see a video on Ensemble!
Very interesting and impressive
honestly, i really feel sad that none of these alternatives to windows became at least nearly as big as windows did, because these operating systems look really cool and even sometimes a little better than windows
When it says "Press A Key To Continue" you kept saying "so we press A to continue", this cracked me up ;-) Wiki even has an article about "Any key"
Show us the Breadbox Ensemble next.
NewDeal Ensemble (3.x) before that. And NewDeal Office 2000 (4.1.x) after Breadbox (4.0-4.1).
Nice Video! :)
I remember some years ago Hyperking wanted to do a retron X86 that ran DOS games in a 80 and 90 all in one computer form factor. If that product ever came out of if it still in development this would be a great option to boot the games or the breadbox version.
I would love to see more coverage of alternate DOS graphical environments
Sir. I am looking for geoworks discs for my hp elite 8200. Or the breadbox ensemble. Will it work with windows 10? Any help would be helpfu. Thank you in advance.
Ha, I used to use GEOS on the C64 mostly for going above gaming and using it for homework. But geoPaint was nice to play with for 8 bit systems. I went straight on to windows 3.1 from Geos, having no idea GeoWorks was a thing.
Back in 90ies I wanted so hard to try Geoworks, but it just never happened. Very nice video about very interesting graphical OS extension.
I had it on my C128, great software back then, very nice.
Heck YES! Please do more videos on early Windows alternative (that isn't Linux because everyone knows about Linux).
GEM! If you can get it configured it is good. Great Desktop Publisher for DOS. Ran it under Deskview. DESKVIEW! :)
We had Ensemble Pro on our family machine back in the day. It really did make DOS a lot easier to use especially for games.
I remember how the prints were amazingly sharp even on a 9 dots matrix printer, compare to what W3.xx was able to do. It took very very very long to print and eat nearly a full ink ribbon for 3 sheets but it was close to an inkjet printer of the era. I had, at the time, 2 machines, a 286 with GEOS installed on it and a 386 with W3.1 and a lpt switch with a Canon BJ-10 and a Epson LQ-870 (I still use today) and the results on the matrix printer were very close to the inkjet ones. I had a friend with a 9-pins printer, and the result were also very nice.
I remember using the GeoWorks operating environment with my AOL version 1.5 disk. It wasn't nearly as functional as AOL for Windows but it performed better. Oh, and I definitely want to see that GeoWorks Ensemble video.
Does this version capitalize on 386 enhanced features like windowed background running DOS applications, a la Windows 3.0?
I want this Windows XP lamp
I got geoworks on a cd-rom that came bundled with a NEC 2x external (parallel not SCSI) cd-rom drive and I used to go back and forth with windows 3.1 and Geoworks, but never having both installed at the same time on a 486sx 66mhz. Also Battle Chess was included with the drive as well.
Yeah another Video 🙏😁
Very interesting video. I first used Geos on a c64 then later when i moved to a c128 i got Geos128.Never used the pc version, mostly because I got a Tandy 1000sl which used the Deskmate software.. In 93 I started using windows 3.0 on a clone pc and quickly upgraded that to Windows 3.11.
Some - in my opinion - important point of GeoWorks were not mentioned in this video: - All GeoWorks applications are capable of using "long file names" instead of the 8.3 limitation that DOS (and Win3.1) had. That's also why there are no ".exe" files in the WORLD directory - the files there ARE the applications (showing its GeoWorks name) and no "shortcuts". - GeoWorks included some very good printer drivers for the time, my Epson LX-400 had way better looking documents when printing from GeoWrite than from any Windows 3.x program. - When used together with (the much better) DR-DOS 6 or Novell DOS 7, GeoWorks could control the DR-DOS task switcher (the background task will be halted) or Novell-DOS task manager (the background task will still run), what made it possible to use DOS and GeoWorks applications together. - GeoWorks had preemptive multitasking inside its operating environment, a thing that Windows 95 only had with 32 bit applications. - The GUI look and feel was a switchable module! Instead of the (very nice) Motif look shown in the video, also a "Win95"-like look was available, or a CUA (Windows 2.x) or OpenLook (OpenWindows). At least for GeoWorks 1.x, I don't know if there modules work on 2.x (or the Motif module will work on Breadbox Ensemble, as I don't like the Win9x look) - And last but not least: GeoWorks featured a "user level" system, also especially for people who are new to computers or are "no experts". In GeoWorks 1.x this heavily influenced the look of the system and was set system-wide, in 2.x I think only the applications could offer such a setting. It defined, what options the user will see and how "complicated" the application will be. As today every application gets "dumbed-down", I miss such a thing, as I miss the "advanced" and "expert" level...
Hey Michael! Love this video. Do you have an ISO for this by any chance? Wifi is kinda slow right now.
wouldnt u still have to download it? lol
I like watching these videos about now obscure operating environments and user interfaces. There's a lot of neat stuff that should've been further developed and could've improved the user experience for millions or even billions of computer users had their potential been realised, like the multiple system trays in OS/2 or the ability to pin menus. If I'm ever tasked with creating a UI toolkit or a full desktop environment, I'd love to include things like this.
I remember when this came out. I was seriously thinking of buying it. But I was worried if there would be any additional software support.....additional applications from different providers. If I remember.....not a lot of additional software programs from different companies was written to run within the Geoworks environment. It may look dated now but it did look seriously sweet when it came out
I’m just 13 but I’m interested in this nostalgia things so I subbed u.i have been watching your videos since the beginning of this year
and it's got a MOTIF theme akin to every decent Unix system, I dig it!
Love these old GUI operating systems even if they are blatent copies of the original Mac OS. The ability to pin menus and drag them around as windows was common to a few OSs of that era. There was a popular extensions for the classic Mac OS that did it, NeXT OS had it by default and so did the early betas for OSX.
Apple really pushed that whole idea that everything GUI had to be copying the Mac, didn’t it?
Jobs going to visit Palo Alto had much to do with it, IMO. And then Apple suing GEM for their trashbin when they were all following the lead of UNIX Windowing systems seems petty to me.
@@creakycracker Ancient history this but Jobs/Apple *licensed* the ideas from Xerox and developed them a long a way from the Star. They paid for it. GEM was a straight up rip off, no question, as was Windows 1.0. UNIX/Linux didn't get a GUI until much, much later and they typically copied Windows more than anything. Why do it say they were rippoffs? Because there are many ways to implemente a GUI - we see that with phones now. But everyone one of these systems had overlapping windows with title bars, close buttons on the right, pull down menus at the top (typically with File/Edit menus) and trashcans.