Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

andsoitis

Year of release for each would be extra awesome.

tomhow

Previously: Historical workstation desktop interface screenshots - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36191713 - June 2023 (55 comments) Retrotechnology – PC desktop screenshots from 1983-2005 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15968745 - Dec 2017 (58 comments)

grebc

Amazing resource!

lynndotpy

I love this kind of thing :) I finally have a second site to bookmark alongside this similar collection: https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots

Terr_

> DECWindows > /tmp/med_16.sixel ... Is that Sinfest? From before the author went weird? If so, then that's certainly a very different way of feeling old than I expected when clicking the link. P.S.: There's another in "RiscOS 3.71", and "System V Release 4 Amiga Version 1.1" references Penny Arcade. [0] [0] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/01/05/the-merch#

barrenko

"We have learned nothing in 10,000 years."

yjftsjthsd-h

It's funny how early some things do and don't look familiar. A decent chunk of unix-family OSs have changed some since then, but also kinda not. CDE 1.0 looks almost exactly like the latest version:)

giamma

No mention of GeOS! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Softworks

bsdooby

Even the site with its NeXTStep style (love it).

jchw

Probably also worth dropping this here in the off chance someone here will be part of today's lucky 10,000. http://toastytech.com/guis/ At first glance it looks like this is much more breadth over depth. Quite an array of systems here.

jeffreygoesto

https://networkencyclopedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/n...

mananaysiempre

Where did the author get a copy of pre-X-integration NeWS, I wonder (if indeed they did). I haven’t been able to locate one online after a lot of determined searching, but I also can’t bring myself to declare that there isn’t one because the name is so ungoogleable.

darkwater

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 relevant section of the manpage that discussed that term. Am I fabricating that memory or is it real? I cannot find any info about it on the Internet.

inatreecrown2

What a wonderful resource! HP VUE has interesting color choices and a nice "Dock"

pedrogpimenta

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!

oniony

I love how little df has changed since 1985.

livinglist

Sometime I wish time goes slower

aidos

Alleycat in CGA just hit me hard. For the people that didn’t live through this time, lining these images up makes it obvious why those that did speak of how visually impressive the Amiga was.

xnorswap

This leaves me kind of sad, that we've had such little innovation in desktop / window-managers for 30 years. Certainly it doesn't feel any easier to manage multiple windows than when we had a quarter of the screen space.

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.