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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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:)
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.
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
I miss the old days. Thirty years ago, 64MB of RAM was considered a thing (http://www.typewritten.org/Media/Images/winnt-4.0-ppc-new.in...)
No mention of GeOS!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Softworks
Or GS/OS for the Apple IIgs, the weird "not exactly Mac OS" GUI.
There is the 16-bit Geoworks Ensemble (PC/GEOS), at least.
I love this kind of thing :) I finally have a second site to bookmark alongside this similar collection: https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots
Irix 5 was so clean!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My 'first Unix' was MIPS Risc/OS, and it had that feature too.
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.
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)
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:)
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.
https://networkencyclopedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/n...
That brings back memories from pre press days and the SGI Indigo machines. They did some heavy lifting for the time.
What a wonderful resource! HP VUE has interesting color choices and a nice "Dock"
Year of release for each would be extra awesome.
Even the site with its NeXTStep style (love it).
I love how little df has changed since 1985.
Sometime I wish time goes slower
> 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.
Amazing resource!
"We have learned nothing in 10,000 years."
Probably more accurately 40-45 years.
I don’t see any pie menus, so I’m leaning towards agreement...
Patents are very good at stifling progress and learning, even bogus ones.