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DesqView/X: Night of the Living Dead Codebases
Pazuzues writes "I found something that you could say peaked my interest. It seems Symantec (purchasers of former company Quarterdeck) has release DeskView/X into public domain and can be downloaded now. DesqView/X was a GUI and OS extender that installed into DOS very much like MS Windows does. This little GUI can run X-Windows and MS Windows 3.x software and can even gateway serve MS Windows applications to remote X terminals. It was way ahead of its time and is a pretty decent toy to play with if you have a old 486 laying around. Anyways there is a petition being started that is petitioning Symantec to release the source code as OpenSource. I think this is a really good idea and could possiably help alot of other existing projects like WINE for example. It can load X and rexec X apps with 16mb RAM for Pete sakes!"
Really, are there any constructive comments that can be added to this discussion besides "sign the petition!"?
Not to troll, but I think we all know what needs to be done and why it would be a good thing to do it.
I remember having to use DESQVIEW to multitask when I was running my BBS off of MSDOS.. Ahh, full screen ANSI menu's and RIP graphics to boot. I want my bbs, and I want it now.
BTW, i'll "deffentntnetnly" check this out.
You want FreeDOS, free as in beer and GPL too. It works very well.
Actually, one of the most usefull features of DesqView/X was the ability to remotely access serial ports on another machine. I used to work in a customer service group who's application was only avilable via an RS232 connection. Each workstation was limited to two physical serial lines that had been run from X.25 nodes. A number of us installed DV/X and shared our ports out when we weren't working. This allowed you to grab unused remote ports and open 4 or more serial connections with our mainframe apps. Very handy.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
If code is in the public domain anyone is free to do whatever they want with it. Therefore it is by definition Open Source. I'm sure if you check out the OSD on opensource.org it will include Public Domain.
--
Justin Chapweske, Onion Networks
Back in the day...
:) I wouldn't have all these wasted brain cells which know every single bug in DOS/QMM. :)
... my "modern" first computer was a 386DX... basically because it was 32 bit and had a math coprocessor. Damn that thing was cool. I had computers before that but this was the first one I thought was da bomb.
After a while I would tweak DOS to get the MAXIMIM amount of conventional memory 640k out of it. Quarterdeck Memory Manager did an AMAZING job of moving things around and forcing them to load in the correct memory segment.
It was always amazing to see how well it would increase your memory.
I would run QMM, DesqView for multitasking and Norton Commander as my filemanager, and QModem to get into my neighborhood BBS.
QMM was needed with DesqView because it required a lot of resources.
I was S000 37337!
Man I wish I had Linux 2.4 and Debian back then !
Kevin
$ host disvr.cjb.net
:-)
disvr.cjb.net A 66.24.22.15
$ host 66.24.22.15
Name: syr-66-24-22-15.twcny.rr.com
Address: 66.24.22.15
$ ping syr-66-24-22-15.twcny.rr.com
PING syr-66-24-22-15.twcny.rr.com (66.24.22.15): 56 data bytes
--- syr-66-24-22-15.twcny.rr.com ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss
Run your site on a Road Runner cable modem and you KNOW it'll get slashdotted
Anyone got a mirror?
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Is it really as useful as people think? If its abandonware, then it has fallen so out of date that there is no point in keeping it hidden. Why would Borland release Turbo Pascal 5.5 and Turbo C(++?) 1.01 into the public domain when the "newer" (but still really old) versions of those apps are still private? Because the old ones have lost so much functionality relatively.
Ancient X apps and Windows 3.1 applications? That's great if you're still coding in outdated setups. Current standards seem much more complex, open-ended and harder to emulate. Wine is probably not perfect for a reason.
--
"Everybody wants a rock to wind a piece of string around." - They Might Be Giants, "We Want a Rock"
DESQview/X 2.1 is available for download from http://www.chsoft.com
Disk 1
Disk 2
Disk 3
Disk 4
Disk 5
Disk 6
Disk 7
Disk 8
FREEdisk
The future isn't what it used to be.
http://www.chsoft.com/dv.html
a pp s.desqview-x.html
http://www.freemm.org/DesqView X/
http://www.bookcase.com/library/software/msdos.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
A lot of commercial software uses pieces licensed from other people, and sometimes the people who developed the licensed technology aren't willing to release it.
I know of one scanner company that normally plays nicely (releases specs for the protocols for their SCSI and USB scanners) that cannot release their parallel protocol because of agreements they have with the suppliers of the chipsets in the scanners... Yet the company fields hostile "release the protcol you idiots" spam from "Open Source" advocates.
It's cool when a company can release an old product free - but in some cases it's just not possible...
- Steve
The article doesn't say the source code was released. I assume just the binaries were released into the public domain, and the source code remains secret.
Desqview learned me to do proper programming. It's true. When I used it the first time, all my self-written C programs (and pascal too) bombed because of uninitialized pointer references.
:-)
I had to walk through everything to fix it and it learned me how to threat pointers properly. A lesson learned which will never be forgotten
bash$
It would be really nice to see something that can display windows apps remotely via X (and via something more efficient than VNC).
If the english language made any damn sense it wouldn't be so hard. Anyone can learn english in 6 months. Problem is it takes another 20 years to memorize all the exceptions to rules.
;)
I willn't stand for it
Rod Taylor
In any case, the release of DV/X wouldn't help WINE in any way, really. DV DV/X allowed you to run Win 3.1 apps in the same way that you can run Classic Mac OS apps in Mac OS X, or that OS/2 2.1 could run Win 3.1 apps. Win 3.1 ran in a little box all to itself. It ran the entire Win 3.1 OE, not implemented the API (as Wine and Odin do). You can see a screenshot of this here.
DV/X was pretty cool, esp. for a DOS user in those days, but it isn't really relevant anymore. I could see people with old DOS machines who wanted the binaries, that makes perfect sense. However, there's really nothing to be gained from the release of the source. It's not like someone can port it to MS-DOS/PowerPC. ;)
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Have a look at:
http://www.bootdisk.com
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
The article poster doesn't appear to understand the concepts of public domain and open source.
Releasing the binaries without licensing restrictions is not the same as putting the program in the public domain (I don't think you can put binaries in the public domain without putting source as well, as one copyright covers both). The major difference is whether derivative works require permission from a copyright holder.
If the program is in the public domain, open source licenses are inapplicable, because it's no longer anybody's to impose licensing restrictions on. Hence the question.
Yes. Still not the same thing.
I want something that does like RDP to X translation.
VNC or TightVNC are still just screenscrapers/window scrapers
Pazuzues should have written "I found something that you could say piqued my interest. It seems that Symantec (which purchased now-defunct Quarterdeck years ago) has released into the public domain binary versions of DesqView/X. DesqView/X was a GUI and DOS extender that installed over DOS very much like MS Windows did. This little GUI can run X-Windows and MS Windows 3.x software and can even act as gateway to serve MS Windows applications to remote X terminals. It was way ahead of its time and is still a pretty decent toy to play with. It can load X and rexec X apps with 16MB of RAM, for Pete's sake! All it needs is an old 486. A petition has been started to urge Symantec to release the source code under an Open Source license. I think this is a really good idea, as it could possibly help a number of projects, such as WINE. DesqView/X is available for download now."
How much "editing" does being an "editor" involve, anyway? 8^D
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Thanks, pazuzes. Now i'm going to have to have a flashback. **sits back**
:)
1994.. Running my BBS locally.. Wanted to multitask... installed Desqview.. wow.. leet! Its like dosshell.. Only.. not! Oh, crap.. LORD is running slow on node 2.. time to tweak QEMM.. lets see if we can get that extra 2K out!
1995.. OS/2 warp comes along. I install it - that extra ~100K on top of 640 is LEET!!! I never go back.
I have to wonder.. How fast would Windows 3.1, DOS, or OS/2 boot on a 1.4 Ghz Athlon?
The word is "piqued," although here it is used improperly. From M-W, it means "to excite or arouse by a provocation, challenge, or rebuff."
It seems Symantec (purchasers of former company Quarterdeck) has release DeskView/X into public domain and can be downloaded now.
It's "DesqView/X." It's "released." It's "the public domain." It's a run-on sentence.
DesqView/X was a GUI and OS extender that installed into DOS very much like MS Windows does.
Here we have an inconsistent use of tense. The last word should be "did." I wonder what "installed into DOS" could mean.
This little GUI can run X-Windows and MS Windows 3.x software and can even gateway serve MS Windows applications to remote X terminals.
It's either "X" or "X Window System." We have another run-on sentence. I wonder what "gateway serve" is. DesqView/X was both an X client and an X server, I believe. Of course, the X Client is what would run on the DesqView/X machine to be displayed on a remote X Server.
It was way ahead of its time and is a pretty decent toy to play with if you have a old 486 laying around.
Insert a comma after "time." It's "an old 486."
Anyways there is a petition being started that is petitioning Symantec to release the source code as OpenSource.
It's "open source."
I think this is a really good idea and could possiably help alot of other existing projects like WINE for example.
It's "possibly." It's "a lot." Insert a comma after WINE.
It can load X and rexec X apps with 16mb RAM for Pete sakes!
It's usually stated as "for Pete's sake," referring to Saint Peter.
How utterly abominable. What a disservice Slashdot does its readers, acting as its readers were unintelligent, and uncaring about either spelling or grammar. What a disservice Slashdot does to the English language.
I am not a lawyer. Do not take my words as legal advice. If you need legal advice, consult an attorney.
I used the text version of desqview. I tried desqview/X at the time, but the 386-25 with 3 megs of ram I had wasn't quite up to using it usefully.
I'm not POSITIVE about desqview/X's support of windows apps. If I remember correctly, it could export certain apps, but not those running in enhanced mode. Of course, I'm speaking about stuff I was playing with 10 years ago.
And as far as WiNE is concerned, they've pretty well gotten the 3.x API solid, and have for several years now.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
The saying refers to Peter, the apostle of Christ. As in Saint Peter, or "for Saint Peter's sake".
--- witty signature
RIP graphics? OH GOD THE AGONY! THE PAIN!
(ok it was a neat idea, but I never saw anyone make good use of it)
It can load X and rexec X apps with 16mb RAM for Pete sakes!
So can XFree86. At least, the version I was using back in 1992 certainly worked on a 486 with 4MB of RAM. Slow, but functional.
Ah, for the good old days circa 1991, when 4 megs of RAM was a bunch and DesqView was the method of choice for multitasking on your PC. I fondly recall running my BBS in one DV window while writing term papers in another with WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS.
Quaint things I remember about DV:
* Well-behaved BBS programs (including all the FidoNet tools) were DV-aware and would kindly give up its timeslice if they weren't doing anything.
* QEMM, the memory manager that came with DesqView, had a complicated "optimization" script that tried to rearrange all your TSR programs to maximize the amount of available memory under 640k. The size of each Desqview DOS session was limited to the amount of sub-640k RAM that was free when you started DV, so optimization was really important.
* You started different programs from the DV menu by assigning them two-letter key codes. I remember rearranging the codes at length to minimize the finger travel time needed to open my most frequently used programs.
* DV was really bad at switching video modes. If you happened to be running Windows under DV, the screen would turn to some kind of bizarre CGA/EGA mode when you invoked the DV menu.
DV/X was going to be the "next big thing," but I don't recall hearing about it after the feature article in HAL-PC magazine. In any case, it was quite expensive. Even QEMM was something like $40; I recall getting a copy as a birthday present, which became the only properly licensed piece of commercial software on my machine at the time.
Oh well, better mod this one (-1, maudlin nostalgia).
Of course, I could be mistaken as well, since I never used Desqview...
But are you mistaking Tandy's DeskMate for Desqview? DeskMate was Tandy's whole desktop environment, the whole yellow-on-blue-by-default thing that let you type/draw/etc. Basically kind of an office suite that ran on a 286, it was pretty cool at the time.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Possibly too fast, depending on the applications you want to run.
Last year I was assigned a seemingly trivial "upgrade" project for a customer that runs an old DOS-based app. First of all, I had to find a new PC with an ISA slot -- not as easy as you might think, considering hat the customer wanted a "name-brand" PC with full warranty.
I finally found an HP model with a riser card for ISA support. PC-DOS loaded fine, but when I tried to start the customer's application, the machine locked up tight. After checking with the application vendor, I was chagrined to hear that the program will not run on anything faster than a Pentium 90.
Many DOS-based programs that ran on the ragged edge of (then-current) technology used hard-coded timing loops that simply can't cope with the clock speeds of today's processors.
So maybe DOS will boot super-fast on your Athlon, but there's no guaranty that it wil run many of your "vintage" programs...
Please come back to the discussion once you have read something more than the GPL.
What a foresight they must have had when they thought of the name, eh?
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Here is my petition to Symantec.
xxxxxxxxxx O xxxxxxxxxx H xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx W xxxxxxxxxx E xxxxxxxxxx L xxxxxxxxxx L xxxxxxxxxx.
I applaud and commend you fine folks at Symantec for allowing the free download of DesqView/X. When this software was new, it was far ahead of its time. I believe it contains technology that much new software would do well to have. In that light, I'm asking you to consider releasing the source code to DesqView/X, so that software such as Linux might benefit from its innovative features.
xxxxxxxxxx O xxxxxxxxxx H xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx W xxxxxxxxxx E xxxxxxxxxx L xxxxxxxxxx L xxxxxxxxxx.
It probably won't happen though.
xxxxxxxxxx O xxxxxxxxxx H xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx W xxxxxxxxxx E xxxxxxxxxx L xxxxxxxxxx L xxxxxxxxxx.
It's nice to see that it's happened. However, if you read the glossies (I actually have 'em 'round here somewhere), you'll see that "running Windows" stuff is a bit of an exaggeration. It runs Windows stuff... Windows 3.x stuff, to be precise. I'd say that the potential for Desqview/X would be a lot closer to if Sun released WABI than something that could help the good WINE folk.
Alas.
But, hey -- maybe there is some good stuff to mine. It certainly was an amazing application when it came out; hopefully it will be released as OS, and maybe we can do something unexpected with it.
I used DV/X in the olden days. It was most impressive. It really had better multi-tasking that Windows 3.1 of the day. I had great hopes for it, and I think with better positioning, it could have given Windows a run for the money. It was well targeted upon it's first release, and could have made a difference, but they just didn't follow through. And as they languished, it just became less and less relevant. Still a very cool way of turning an old 486 into a X terminal (and client). Would probably be more efficient than (Linux|FreeBSD)+X.
:-), SunRays, most thin Clients, Linux PDA's. I'm sure there's a dozen more (and I'm sure they're all sitting in my basement, colecting dust :-)
There's quite a list of things in my book that really could have "made a difference" in the industry, but just didn't follow through effectively. Microsoft may be slow to respond in a lot of cases, but they *do* respond; other folks take years, or never do anything. For fun, here's my list (off the top of my head): Corel Linux, Corel Office, Star Office, BeOS, QNX (lower the damn license fees, okay?
Here's hoping we'll see more companies whose management can realize when they have a product that can make a difference, and they redirect resources accordingly, rather than thoroughly botching it.
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Anyhow, turning nostalgia mode off, Linux Window managers could learn from Desqview's sophisticated cut and paste proceedures. It was possible to smoothly paste from, for example, a word processor to cells of a spread-sheet because you could specify keystrokes to go between each piece of data. If the cutting and pasting didn't require any special keys, just press return or space bar to make each line delimited by them. It was simple or powerful, depending upon your needs. KDE (and GNOME, etc.) rock, but they could learn a thing or two about clipboard management from humble Desqview.
My uncle, Gary Pope, was co-founder of Quarterdeck, and did development on all versions of QEMM and DESQview. Unfortunately, he does not have the sourcecode to DESQview anymore, as he gave up all rights to it when he retired. However, he has been able to share with me some of the internals of DESQview and DESQview/X. I won't get into much of them, but to all the people who are hoping to get some useful code they can copy and paste into their own programs by signing the petition, you may be disappointed.
:)
The sourcecode to DESQview/X is (at least for the most part) in Assembly. It was the only way they could create a full X environment that could fit on a couple floppies and take so little RAM. I know previous versions used a language that Gary Pope wrote called SYMPL, which was lisp-based and provided the back-end functionality for the multitasking on 8088 processors in the original DESQ and DESQview.
So, most of the code, if it is ever released, may not be completely usable to most people. It would still be an interesting read, however, and I signed the petition almost a year ago.
Another good source of information on DESQview is the newsgroup comp.os.msdos.desqview. It seems to be pretty active, and has some good information on using DESQview.
DESQview and DESQview/X were great products. Have fun
We were trying to add old BBS doors support to a friends BBS years ago, and we could either get a stack of 286s or a reasonable machine with Desqview 386. Well, Desqview wasn't on the market anymore, so we tried OS/2, Win95, and later WinNT, none would handle our doors. We tried to warez it but failled. We later tried a stack of 286s, but the systems weren't playing nicely with our NT Server (didn't have the expertise or budget for an admin for a Novell server).
A few years ago it would have been great for me. Maybe I'll drop the cash and try the system now...
Alex
I wouldn't say it has nothing to do with it. I haven't read the appropriate CFRs lately, so I don't know the Copyright Office's attitude toward it, but I would be surprised if a binary merited a separate copyright, since there's no additional expression contained within.
I used to be a heavy Desqview (no the X version) user. Nice product for its time. When desqview came, the whole product line was dying anyway. Even if you don't use it, you can download for the X11 (Type 1) fonts. They work really well with X11.
If you install w95 and then edit the msdos.sys file, you can add ... and the machine will start up to a command prompt.
However, you'll have to attrib -h -s -r msdos.sys before you can edit msdos.sys. I'll note that the Windows 95 procedure that wildcard023 gave works only on machines with 386 or higher processors, as some parts of DOS have been upgraded to 32-bit. It also works in Windows 98 and 98SE but not in Windows ME. Microsoft didn't want to release an operating system that would be called "DOS ME" because it didn't want kiddies to take that as a request for a packet flood. (What's the difference again between the Slashdot effect and a distributed non-spoofed SYN flood?)
Also, in all Windows 9x operating systems (including ME), you can get DOS by making an emergency boot disk.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Desqview was a great util... but one caveat:
Do NOT run it on a compressed drive (if anyone still has compressed drives in this era of cheap hard disks!) If you do, sooner or later it WILL eat the compressed volume file.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Here's the funny part.
As computer scientists, the guys who run slashdot are decent editors.
As editors, they make decent computer scientists.
I don't mean that as a joke. If these guys are MIS or computer science guys, then have them go to an english writing seminar. And hire JonKatz (I don't believe its a real person) an editor who will kindly work with him to improve his style.
However, if these guys are journalists with an interest in computers, then there's no excuse for some of the grammatical slop around here.
They never seem to bring the right tools to the job.
Several points
1) The X that is part of DesQView iw XR4. Don't know how useful that is.
2) As a former employee of Symantec, I do remember that not all of the source code actually made it over from QuarterDeck and I believe that the source code for DesqView was part of that. From what I understand, former QuarterDeck employees wiped a large number of hard drives prior to leaving the company. I don;t think managment really cared as Cleansweep was really the only product that they were interested in, even though Procom also survived (Although management was not really interested in Procom that much)
I've never heard of MORE.. Is it anything like Omni's OmniOutliner?
An automatic speling an grammar checking filter each on downloaded page would be pretty slick.. Work on this for us you will?
Alright, I know there are some people who read about these things and get all teary eyed as they relive their youth again. Not me. I was a college student with my 386SX, running MS-DOS. All I wanted to do was run an editor in one window, and Microsoft C 5.1 in the other window. I had hardly any money at all to spend on this stuff. The computer cost me $900 with a lot of scrounged parts, and I could barely afford that. The compiler belonged to my boss. Tuition bills were killing me.
I bought Desqview thinking that would help. It didn't, because it just partitioned the 640K into chunks that were too small. Also, it kept crashing . I spent a lot of time booting my computer. So, I got QEMM to go along with that. I think that I spent $150 for both of them. The QEMM gave me more memory, but it crashed even MORE. I couldn't work that way. Little did I know that it would be more than 3 years before I could move away from MS-DOG onto a real system that would accommodate a poor person AND not crash - Linux.
I have no illusions that those days with MS-DOS were the "good old days." I am forever in the debt of Linus Torvalds and his operating system, and it's all I can do to forget pissing away money that I couldn't really afford to spend, trying to get a Microsoft OS to just plain work. It was a nightmare that I never want to think about ever again.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Has anyone actually confirmed that this is true?
I've been unable to access the site http://disvr.cjb.net/freedv referenced in the article. If this is an offical Symantec decision, why aren't the binaries available from http://www.symantec.com? I just searched their site for the word "DesqView" and found no mention of this supposed release.
The alternative http://www.chsoft.com/dv.html posted here contains binaries but I can't see any mention of any official announcement by Symantec about the binaries now being in Public Domain.
The site http://www.freemm.org/DesqView%20X/, also mentioned in postings here on Slashdot, (and last updated Wed Apr 11 2001) says the following:
It seems to me that this rumour has been around for a few months now.
Finally, if this is true, why isn't there any announcements about it on comp.os.msdos.desqview?. And why did Amos Vryhof, presumably the owner of http://disvr.cjb.net/freedv recently start his own OpenDVX project on Sourceforge?
I'd love for it to be true, but until I see some official announcement from Symantec, I can't say that I believe it.
> There was a HUGE PC demo scene in the early 90s.
Early 90s? We're talking mid- to late 80s here, back when the PC was spending 80% of its CPU cycles servicing the keyboard. There wasn't much to demo on the PC back then.
-
> and could possibly help lots of other existing projects; for example, WINE.
Actually it won't help WINE because you still need a copy of Win 3.1 in order to run Windows apps in DESQview X. Also, it will only run it in real mode.
Y'know, I thought that all of those terrible mmories of seeing RIP graphics were gone from my brain.
Lo and behold, an image formed into my head that will stay there like a train wreck for quite a while. That terrible, terrible grey, and the grey... and did I mention the grey? And why did everyone see fit to use yellow text on it.
Arrrgh, make it stop.
Ancient X apps and Windows 3.1 applications?
/X and you might have IE under Linux : )
If Deskview/X goes Open Source, there might be a Linux port. There's 16 bit versions of Internet exporer 4.01SP2 and I think there might be a 16Bit 5.0 too. Combine them with Desqview
Tho Wine will probably do it soon enough anyway. Just a thought.
The one day my system is offline, I make the front page of Slashdot.... Dammit all to hell!
Just to correct a few misconceptions. It is true, that Desqview/X does NOT run Windows applications without Windows in one of it's windows. Moreover, it is not public domain. I am working hard with people at Symantec to get the rights, but until then it is illegal to decompile or reverse engineer Desqview/X!
As for an OpenSource version of Desqview/X, I am looking for developers to work on it. It is Here! I am getting all of the original documentation, and have all of the original API toolkits.
If your into X, and DOS join the crew, and maybe some good can come of this!
Have a nice night, and I think this will spark enough interest to push Symantec in the right direction.
-AV
Make America grate again!
Even if that were true (which I don't believe it is - they are two separate copyrights), nothing obligates you to release the source code. Even if you have renounced your copyright on it, all that means is that it's not now illegal to copy it. But if you have the only copy, you can still refuse to give it to people.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Nothing like the day of tweaking fossile drivers, setting priority and multitasking in DOS.
Then came along OS/2
If you can find it on google it was the "Linux BBS List". You can see my lowly bored as the one that was "long distance to some areas".. I couldn't afford the metro line fees on my lowly 12 year old allowance.
hahaha
Well this was awesome software in the 80's... If it had been released open source a decade ago when it was still new it would have redefined the OS world. As it stands it is only average at best... Next!
Given that the base HW req's for DV/X are so low (by today's standards), this might let us nip two persistent problems:
... I ran DV on my 386DX-25 for two reasons: I had 8MB of RAM and DV let me use ALL of it, and it let me do modem-intensive apps in the background. I never "up" graded to DV/X, though - hadn't the $$, and I fell into Linux in the 0.99 days.
1. How do we make old computer hardware useful?
2. How do we get low-cost computers to lots of people?
Set up a bunch of 486s, or P-Is running DV/X, give them each a Gnome or KDE desktop running on some other server, and let people surf, or whatever. One high power machine, lots of terminals.
ObPine:
I remember drooling over DV/X back in the day
Unfortunately, the spare 486 walked out of my lab before I could implement it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Nowadays, we'd probably be caught and tried as terrorists under the Patriot© act, but in those days most folks were trusting...
Yeah, right.
Do any of y'all remember TSX-32? Well, I shouldn't say "remember", as it is still alive and well. I first found out about the TSX-32 Operating System back when I was in high school in 1992. The neat thing about this OS was that it was multi-user and had virtual consoles way before I had even heard of Linux. Anywho, it's still around and you can download the shareware version from their Web site.
Chris
RDPX is easy enough. (see rdesktop) but that won't get you what you're looking for since (afaik) there is nothing for windows to serve single apps out of RDP. Plus RDP doesn't really have the features to transparently support a desktop like this.
The closest I have seen is running the Citrix ICA client in X and exporting a single application from the server. It can be made to have the application windows borderless and managed by your window manager. Some apps need to be run in a desktop window though, since they try to do things like customize the tilebar and control menus, install an item in the tray, etc.
~GoRK
I used Desqview (not /X) for its multitasking capabilities to run a BBS. Worked like a charm. It was a truly multitasking OS way before Windows 95.
{{.sig}}
People also forget that "releasing the source code" entails a pass through it to clean up bad code, no-ops, and, particularly, comments. How many times have you looked though the source code to something and seen comments like:
/* Warning - *MASSIVE* kludge below */
or
/* I had to do it this way because Fred was too
*&^%$ lazy to code for this in the base
libraries */
Companies don't want customers to see this kind of thing, even in ten year old codebases. Even for companies who are willing to release their old binaries, it's hard to justify the time it takes to clean up the source code for release. Personally, I think Borland deserves kudos for treating this as abandonware and releasing the binaries. Let's hope more companies follow suit.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
Well, my old BBS had only one line, but I ran it under DESQview on top of DR DOS 6 on a 286 and then on a 386SX. It never so much as hiccuped (except when the power supply started acting up). I went through a couple of BBS packages before settling on Maximus for the BBS itself and Opus for connecting to Fight-O-Net. Both were free (as in beer) and fairly customizable. With DESQview, I could have the BBS up while I read messages through an offline reader or transferred files to/from my Apple II.
DESQview ruled. OS/2 was pretty decent (snagged a free copy of v3.0 at Fall Comdex '94), but IBM succeeded at snatching failure from the jaws of victory.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
The language skills demonstrated by Slashdot editors
would amount to failing freshman English in any
University worthy of the name.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
screen(1) needs to have rectangular regions like
desqview (not dv/x) had. It would also be quite
nice to be able to map "{alt}{alt}" to switch tasks,
and there are probably a few other things that would
be nice that I can't think of right now.
But to me, being able to setup all my windows in
various rectangles of a console would be GREAT, and
is the main feature missing from screen.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Do I know you? If so, you are remembering sideways. The mike was on an SGI machine, we did evesdropping from DV/X bozes. Much more fun was the SGI with its mike on in the board room.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Yeah, wasn't it great to spend hours working on RIP graphics only to figure out that there was exactly 1 person on your board willing to go through the hassle to use them? Not to mention that ASCII graphics were a much. much faster way to get around the board. Can't waste those precious connect minutes!
Why?
Well, feel free to reverse engineer it (e.g. translate to another language) if you want to. There's no one who is going to stop you, since the binary code is in the public domain. But no legal twistery can force them to give you the source code unless they choose to do so. It's the binary that's in the public domain. Period.
n/t
Sig goes here
You are right about the SGI box - too many brain cells dead since then. Every time I make it back to LA, I somehow always end up driving by 150 pico. It hasn't changed all that much. :)
Yeah, right.