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The kind of programmers he's talking about didn't popularize Windows 3.1 by writing Objective C or Java apps. They popularized Windows 3.1 by putting out thousands and thousands of VB apps.

Remember Visual Basic 3.0? It was the first "good" version of VB. It was an awful memory hog, hideously slow, didn't even compile to native code, and lowered the barrier so that lots of non-programmers could release code by drawing a form, double clicking on the buttons, putting in a few almost English-like commands (even in all caps if they wanted, VB would fix it for them), and selecting "Run" from a menu. They could select "Make EXE" from another menu, and then upload their new program to AOL. They didn't even have to worry about distributing a setup program since anyone downloading apps from AOL at the time was quickly pointed to the small runtime DLL required by VB apps.

VB didn't require novice programmers to learn to think in an object orientation; they were just able to say "When I click this button, do this, this and this." At the time some of us thought VB was like a less elegant Hypercard, not a real development language. Unix C programmers and DOS Turbo Pascal programmers laughed at VB fans. Those new coders released thousands of awful applications.... and some of them actually developed into something good. VB itself turned into a huge mess of dependencies and version conflicts, but it's the closest really working thing to a non-coder's language I've ever seen, not to mention a far more efficient use of one's time for prototyping or simple applets than any C-derived language and toolkit, as long as one is stuck in Windows to begin with.

If Lycoris (or Lindows, or someone I haven't heard of yet) were to include a coding tool as simple as VB or simpler, yet also capable of doing everything VB does plus automate all the cool things modern Linux distros include (mp3, web, video, for that matter simple things like pipes etc.) I bet they would own the Linux desktop market within a year, and quickly take a chunk out of Windows' marketshare soon after. Lindows could do it now by licensing some version of Delphi for Click-n-Run, but I wonder if even Delphi is too much for the kind of people VB appealed to in those early years (new programmers hate semicolons and type declarations! and if they have to deal with them, rather than learn something more "correct" they will simply give up... and there goes your critical mass.)

GNUstep is cool, but GNUstep is nowhere near the empowering and market-generating technology that VB was when it first appeared. It is essentially a slightly modernized clone of NeXTstep, which you may have noticed did not take over the world right around the time Win3.x and VB did.

To the parent of the parent: They finally did come out with some kind of VB clone for GEOS, I think NeoBASIC or something like that, but of course it was too little too late. I think you can actually still buy PC/GEOS from the makers of NewDeal Office.... but as their marketing gimmick was that it runs on a 286, they're looking kinda dated at this point.

Check out New Deal Office. It runs on just about any PC and looks pretty cool.

I live in Panorama City, CA. It used to be considered part of Pacoima until the end of World War II and new towns were carved out of old farmland in the San Fernando Valley. The area covered by The City of San Fernando, Mission Hills, Pacoima, Panorama City and Arleta is not a hardcore ghetto like South Central LA, but it's not Beverly Hills either. Lots of struggling Latino, Black and Asian immigrant families (Thai and Filipino mostly) who are trying to make ends meet. Do their children have computers? Not many.

The Digital Divide will not be breached when these children can go to the Library or the computer room at school and wait in line for their 15 minutes to look up a reference or two. The Digital Divide will only be breached when these children have their OWN COMPUTERS. Period.

While we prattle here about how "Linux should not be held back in order to support creaky old 486en" let's consider these facts: 1.) There is now a project afoot to use prison labor to dismantle computers discarded by big corporations; 2.) These computers are usually IN WORKING ORDER; and 3.) These computers could be used by kids who need them.

Windows is NOT the answer...it is actually a goodly portion of the problem. Remember that group in Australia who were visited by the jackbooted thugs of the BSA because they dared load old computers with Windows95? And that's an OS that Microsoft stopped supporting on 12/31/2001! FreeDOS could provide part of the answer, particularly in tandem with New Deal's office and internet suites, but that costs too. Linux could be the entire answer, if someone would take the time to create a basic distro for older PCs.

What Red Hat is doing is not enough. There needs to be a simple, lightweight distribution, of more substance than Freesco and Coyote Linux but DEFINITELY not bloated like the major distros. We're looking for the happy medium here and I don't mean Miss Cleo. It's not a SEXY project. But it's needed. It might even give you some Karma points in Heaven or whatever, because dammit, it's THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

Once upon a time Linux ran contentedly on 386en with 4MB of RAM. It can be done. Let's do it again.

GEOS got licensed (sold?) to New Deal, who are promoting it as a software suite, New Deal Office, for old computers. Their primary customers seem to be schools.

You can download an evaluation version for free. They used to have (non-expiring) beta versions up for testing, but they no longer do. They also seem to have dumped Motif for something called "NewUI". I remember running NDO with OpenDOS, because the GEOS kernel could supposedly utilize OpenDOS's multitasking ability.

Bear in mind, that GEOS (now "NewDOS") is no longer promoted as a seperate product, rather as a means to an end (the office suite/web browser).

GEOS got licensed (sold?) to New Deal, who are promoting it as a software suite, New Deal Office, for old computers. Their primary customers seem to be schools.

You can download an evaluation version for free. They used to have (non-expiring) beta versions up for testing, but they no longer do. They also seem to have dumped Motif for something called "NewUI". I remember running NDO with OpenDOS, because the GEOS kernel could supposedly utilize OpenDOS's multitasking ability.

Bear in mind, that GEOS (now "NewDOS") is no longer promoted as a seperate product, rather as a means to an end (the office suite/web browser).

Anybody remember GEOS? That's another OS that was written entirely in assembly... by the time they finished, Windows had ALL of the marketshare...

Yep, I was one of the developers (fonts, help system, spreadsheet, DBCS version). GEOS is a pre-emptive multi-tasking, multi-threaded OS with a GUI, single imaging model, object-oriented (object-oriented assembly? MooOOoo!), and lots of other wizzy features. It originally ran on a 4.77 MHz, 640K IBM XT, and still uses less than 16MB of disk space (your video card probably has that much RAM now :-)

The OS and apps were done in a reasonable amount of time, but the big problems were:

1. the SDK wasn't available for too long
2. the SDK initially only ran on SPARCstations
3. Microsoft had a OEMs locked into using Windows if they wanted to use DOS. DR-DOS was an option at one point, but OEMs were scared off from it by the incompatabilites MS added

GEOS still lives on. Several companies worked with it until recently, NewDeal and MyTurn.com; both are, alas, now defunct. Nokia used GEOS for the 9000/9110 Communicator which is still alive and kicking. The OS still belongs to Geoworks where it was created, but lots of software is available at Två Katter.

This is at New Deal, Inc. -- Mike Losh

I seem to recall a gui called Geos, or Geospace or works or something along those lines, early to mid 80's.

Geos. It still exists, though it changed hands and is now known as NewDeal.

I should also point out the NewDeal software, which provides a nice, memory-light operating system for even the puniest old machines.

GEOS was great. It was a very clean GUI that needed very little memory to run, and it was a hell of an improvement over the C64 BASIC prompt. For those who are interested, GEOS has evolved into NewDeal.

http://NewDealInc.com/ is an Operating System (DOS overlay) and Office Suite that runs on a 286 with 4MB of RAM. it runs amazingly well on a 486 66Mhz. The OS comes looks like win95 and has a bunch of small utils. the Office package comes with word processor, spreadsheet, and web browser. It is fast and easy to use. They have even worked-out a deal to distribute the software with non-profit computer refurbishment orginizations.

Everybody argues how innovative Microsoft is in general, and who invented the Start button. The funny thing that Geoworks did a couple decades ago. Does anybody remember a revolutionary OS called GEOS? It was Windows 95 when Windows was text based, and it ran on a 286! An Geoworks stole a lot of thier ideas from Macintosh, and Macintosh stole a lot of thier ideas from the Xerox Palo Alto REsearch Center, who had no idea what they owned. James B.

Word processor: N/A for StarOffice executable size? But still, 118K for a word processor is impressive.

Browsers: They compare their browser to the 4.0 versions of both competing browsers. And both of those have a zooming feature.

Visual Programming tools: Can't say anything because I don't know much about VB.

Personal/Home Finance: MicroSoft Money? 13K? ?? Otherwise looks ok...

So this is like MS Works rewritten in assembly. hmmm... worth the $?

If you haven't tried it already, download the NewDeal
Office demo from NewDeal and give it a whirl.
Amazing what it can do on a low-end machine! There is
even a VNC viewer available to connect to your Linux box.

I love both UNIX and the MacOS, and I can see the point that this article is trying to make. Where does one draw the lines on what is in fact a modern operating system.

For example, in the early 1980's Atari came out with an Operating System for their PC's that they called DOS1. It was simply a menu with about six commands on it, and yet then it was called an operating system.

A few years later, Atari also came out with STOS (later on used for the AmigaOS) and Commodore came out with GEOS (Now owned by Newdeal), which are now not usually regarded as operating systems. But they were then.

As technology changes, people seem to continually redefine what an operating system is. If you had asked the programmers on those origional product teams, they would probably have said that those products were valid OS's. If the modern flavours of UNIX were not around today, everyone would probably say that UNIX is not really an OS either. People have their own definitions of what an operating system should do.

Those of us who're old enough may remember GEOS on the C-64, C-128 and Apple II from Berkeley Softworks, back in the '80s. BSW became GeoWorks around 1990, and sold the OS and app suites based on it for a few years, as well as selling it for PDA's like the Tandy/Casio/Sharp "Zoomer" and some HP OmniGo models.

Around the mid-'90s, GeoWorks focused more on smart phones (the Nokia 9000 family of smart phones run GEOS), and desktop stuff was taken over by New Deal, Inc..

On the x86 platform, GEOS offered pre-emptive multitasking, multithreading, and object-oriented design (coded in something resembling Objective C, if I recall from the days when I had the SDK and developer docs, and in assembler) - and it did this a full five years ahead of Windows 95. In 1990, it had shared UI code for all apps, like GNOME and KDE are now doing.

It was also very fast as a platform - it was originally designed to run on an 8086 with 640K, and even the most recent versions are quite happy on a '286 with a meg or two. On anything "recent" in the way of a CPU, it should outperform just about anything - unless, of course, it's loading stuff over a dialup...

--

... does anybody remember Geoworks? That was a cool piece of software...

GeoWorks Ensemble! AKA PC/GEOS! Now NewDeal. That program has had more names then Prince, but it was still cool. I still miss GeoWrite. Still the best WYSIWYG word processor I've used, to this day.

For those who don't know, PC/GEOS was a multi-tasking, multi-threading, object-oriented GUI operating environment that ran on a PC/XT with 640KB of RAM and 10 MB of hard disk. And it was pretty fast, too. A company is trying to resurrect it as NewDeal Office, but I don't put high hopes on it.

Geos is still around as New Deal. Their URL is HTTP://www.newdealinc.com/.

I think you may be getting GEOS and GeoWorks Ensemble confused. GEOS was a GUI-based OS that was available on the Commodore 64/128 and Apple ][ series. (It may have been available on other platforms, but I have first-hand experience with it on a C64 and an Apple ][e.)

GeoWorks Ensemble came later, and was a PC-based loose adaptation of GEOS. You're approximately right about the timing relative to Windows, and you're absolutely right about the astonishingly good performance on very low-end hardware.

GeoWorks Ensemble actually still lives today. It was sold a few years ago to a company called NewDeal Inc., and has been renamed NewDeal Office.

I gave NewDeal Office a spin some time last year, and it still looks and feels very much like the original GeoWorks Ensemble. The improvements are mostly incremental -- nothing revolutionary. The UI is increasingly Windows-like, even including something that looks almost identical to the Windows Start menu.

NewDeal Office is a solid product for people and institutions that have old hardware that isn't up to snuff for the latest OSes and applications. The product is pretty much marketed as a "suite" that happens to have it's own built-in OS, which is appropriate, given the dearth of third-party applications. (That dearth, BTW, is what killed any chance it might have had as a mainstream OS in the first place.)

I think you may be getting GEOS and GeoWorks Ensemble confused. GEOS was a GUI-based OS that was available on the Commodore 64/128 and Apple ][ series. (It may have been available on other platforms, but I have first-hand experience with it on a C64 and an Apple ][e.)

GeoWorks Ensemble came later, and was a PC-based loose adaptation of GEOS. You're approximately right about the timing relative to Windows, and you're absolutely right about the astonishingly good performance on very low-end hardware.

GeoWorks Ensemble actually still lives today. It was sold a few years ago to a company called NewDeal Inc., and has been renamed NewDeal Office.

I gave NewDeal Office a spin some time last year, and it still looks and feels very much like the original GeoWorks Ensemble. The improvements are mostly incremental -- nothing revolutionary. The UI is increasingly Windows-like, even including something that looks almost identical to the Windows Start menu.

NewDeal Office is a solid product for people and institutions that have old hardware that isn't up to snuff for the latest OSes and applications. The product is pretty much marketed as a "suite" that happens to have it's own built-in OS, which is appropriate, given the dearth of third-party applications. (That dearth, BTW, is what killed any chance it might have had as a mainstream OS in the first place.)

Where is it now?

Geos lives on as NewDeal from NewDeal, Inc. NewDeal release 3.2 is out, and requires only a 286 with 640K RAM and 10MB of disk space. It is available as NewDeal Office, NewDeal WebSuite, and NewDeal SchoolSuite to meet different needs. It may be purchased through the NewDeal, Inc. web site with discounts available to users upgrading from previous versions, including Geos.

This is weird but very similar to how New Deal Office (Former GEOS/GEOWorks) works. It has 5 user levels, at the lower level you get less options in most programs, in the higher level you get all the options. That way users don't get confused when they start out but they can step up as they go along (oh, and the user level is adjustable for each major program individually).

it's neat to see these companies from the Old Days back in the news, although, in this case, the news may not be all that great. You may remember the old Commodore on-line service called Q-Link; the rest of the world knows it as AOL.

GEOS lives on as New Deal , which is a pretty cool low-resource footprint GUI for legacy PCs. It's excellent for schools, and developing countries. Shamae it doen't get more attention.

It is also quite incredibly fast running on a PIII 600 :-)

I'm not sure that they're still connected to Geo Works. New Deal was probably spun off some time ago.

GEOS lives on as New Deal , which is a pretty cool low-resource footprint GUI for legacy PCs. It's excellent for schools, and developing countries. Shamae it doen't get more attention. It is also quite incredibly fast running on a PIII 600 :-) I'm not sure that they're still connected to Geo Works. New Deal was probably spun off some time ago.

Apparently, the inside story is that BeOS actually takes something like 2 minutes to boot on the WebPad (maybe longer). Not too impressive for something which should be "instant on" (even more surprising considering how amazingly quickly BeOS boots on a typical desktop PC, but typical desktop PC's have much faster CPU's than the MediaGX in the WebPad). Then again, back in the old days (DR7 anyone?) it ran like a champ on a BeBox Dual/66 with 8MB RAM. Today, on that same BeBox it needs 32MB, and well, it feels pretty sad. QNX sounds like a much better platform for this sort of thing, but they have even worse marketing than Be, so who knows.

Oh, and don't forget Windows CE. It may be a lousy platform but at least MS has the marketing muscle to convince some vendors to jump onto anything they release.. Then again, with the runaway success of PalmOS, a CE monopoly is certainly not assured.

Finally, has anyone looked at NewDeal lately? Terrible name, but it's basically GEOS, if anyone remembers that product for the C64/Apple][/286 days. Very tight code (when it first came out for PC, they bragged about how they wrote it mostly in assembly!) They sell a product that'll connect a 286 or better PC with as little as 640k RAM (2-4MB recommended) to the Internet, including web browser, and email. They also sell an office suite and a BASIC IDE (very much like VB) called NewBASIC. Sure, it's all 16-bit code, but wouldn't that be the ideal choice for an "Internet appliance", and not something like BeOS that really wants a Pentium II and 32MB RAM?

About six months ago I downloaded a trial version of the New Deal OS and tools. They had a functional web browser, Dial-up networking, text editor, spreadsheet, window manager, games, and other apps. All this in ASM and as a 30 day demo. It only cost about 25-50 bucks and was intended to bring life back to 286s and 386s. Something like a couple of megs with all the software, maybe smaller. It had a Windows look to it but worked great. The really neat thing was the developer community at the site. Lots of gratis software, like some apps for the Palm. e.g."Check out this neat app I coded and tell me what you think, and you can keep it free." Check it out at New Deal Inc.

AFAIK, GEOS is now called New Deal. It's still around, and is very cool - turn a 286 PC into a full-featured desktop.

www.newdealinc.com

Geos is still available for the desktop as NewDeal. See the NewDeal, Inc. website. Their online store offers NewDeal Release 3, plus an office suite and web browser, for less than a Windows 98 upgrade.

I do find it rather saddening that their web site is served out by IIS. I liked Geos so much more than Windows, but I had to switch due to a lack of applications.

You can still get GEOS too. Check out New Deal Software. They produce an office suite and other software primarily for schools, which are often the dumping ground for corporations that want to get a tax break for donating old computer equipment. While it's not open source, they do let you download a functional evaluation copy.

At www.newdealinc.com you can download an all-assembly software suite that will run on both old and new versions of MS-DOS. It contains a GUI similar to win95, an office suite, and a web browser, and it runs quickly even on a 286! It requires only a few Mb of HDD space, and will run with only 640K RAM. If you can run DOS on the machine, you can run this suite. For setting up old machines for word processing, generic web browsing, etc... this is a great way to salvage 286s. It'll run under win95, so you can test it out on your real machine first, too.

Apathy is the mind-killer. I've got relatives that glaze over when I talk about something I saw on the Internet or email. I try to set up everyone I know that has a PC but no access with NetZero (www.netzero.net), but you can't make them use it. Most are just afraid they will break the damn thing.

Here's a suggestion. Donate your old PC to your local school district. Even a 386 can run command line Linux. And I just read about a GUI suite of tools by a company called New Deal for 286 on up that runs on DOS and it's slick New Deal Inc. Check it out and make that old PC new again for a friend. It's only $50 and Linux is FREE. Beyond this we can't help the helpless and those that don't want to learn.

I still use it on my Pentium notebook. It's small, fast, sophisticated (it's multithreaded, object-oriented, has virtual memory, long filenames, is compact, you name it) and does exactly what I want it to. It comes with an excellent DTP package supporting outline fonts (rotatable and scalable), bitmap graphics (ditto), vector graphics (ditto), text frames (ditto), paragraph styling, tight wrapping of text around objects, and is blazingly fast... the entire program's 80kB. That's good programming. And this all runs in real mode, no 32-bit code in sight. I've never seen it use more than 4MB of memory, ever...

Go to New Deal's home page for screenshots and a shareware downloadable version (fully working, but you only get one app --- the awsome DTP package mentioned above).

While I would agree that the DOS/NEWDEAL OFFICE combination is an excellent low-power solution for running a "modern" OS on old hardware, this solution just doesn't quite give you the MP3 playback capability that we're looking for here. I ran Caldera DR-DOS and NewDeal on my P100 laptop for quite a while and it worked like magic (until I finally installed linux). If you haven't, you should really check out www.newdealinc.com for information on a really awesome alternative desktop operating environment for 8088-80386 PCs (and for people not wanting to run Linux.)