An Actively Developed GUI for ... FreeDOS?

shanecoughlan writes "FreeDOS, the GPL DOS distribution, has a powerful little graphical user interface called OpenGEM being actively developed for it. Well, powerful is relative. OpenGEM is based off the DR GEM GUI from the 1980s, and is a 16bit single-tasking GUI that tends not to use extended memory. While KDE and GNOME might not be shaking in their boots, it's an interesting opensource project in its own right. And it runs on a 286 with 640kb of RAM..."

Comments

Remember kids...

[alanoneil]

"640k ought to be enough for anybody"

Seriously though, It's good to see some developers going back to the roots of coding tight, efficient programs given certain constraints, instead of making huge bloated apps and recommending PCs built around the app.

Re:Remember kids...

[RAMMS EIN]

On the other hand, the arbitrary constraints that plagued various aspects of the PC architecture are just plain wrong. With a 16-bit segment register and a 16-bit offset register, you'd expect the thing to be able to address more than 20 bits worth of memory.

Hard drives also hit various limits at various times...BIOS limits, limitations of the CHS addressing scheme, and we might soon be hitting a limit the LBA addressing scheme as well (although that at least makes sense).

Of course, all these limits exist because nobody expected such an explosive growth of the amount of internal and external memory that can be cheaply bought, but you'd think they'd eventually realize that arbitrary limits should be avoided instead of replaced by new ones. Other architectures (even some older ones) have had much fewer problems with arbitrary limits than the PC had...if they can get it right, why can't the PC designers?

And I haven't even talked about the software yet. The fact that people were still running DOS, with all its limitations from the 8088 era, long into the Pentium era, is just the stupidest thing ever.

Re:Remember kids...

[triso]

Arbitrary limitation is still going on, too. Try to buy a AMD 64 that can handle more then 4 GB of RAM. Most of the 64 bit motherboards have only 4 slots for SIMMs and it is even possible that some of the chipsets are limited to 4 GB RAM.

I thought the main purpose of 64 bit CPUs was to break the 4 GB barrier.

No screenshots?

[ZosX]

I want to bask in the glory of 640x480x16 all over again!

Screenshots!

[paulius_g]

0.25 seconds of Googling:

http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/bsg fx/os/opengem-scr-01.png
http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/bsg fx/os/opengem-scr-02.png
http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/bsg fx/os/opengem-scr-03.png
http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/bsg fx/os/opengem-scr-04.png
http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/bsg fx/os/opengem-scr-05.png

Enjoy! :-)

Re:No screenshots

[ToastyKen]

Screenshots for command line apps tend not to be very revealing.

Um.. The whole POINT of this article is that this is a GUI, not a CLI!

The people demand screenshots!

This is an interesting project.

[jd]

GEM was a nice GUI - I used it quite a bit. It wasn't that powerful, but it did what it was designed to do. An Open Source version of DesqView would make an excellent companion project to this, as that was the other popular environment of the day.

There were only a few other packages that were really of exceptional worth - so exceptional, they were "must-haves" for anyone from home users to corporate users. Although, in many ways, nobody would really "use" these programs today, they would have massive educational value as they would provide an excellent way for people to study key components of modern systems without having to dive into all the modern complexity.

The packages I would consider "exceptional" would be QEMM (I can't see anyone disagreeing there) and Norton Guides (good intro to interrupt stacking and context sensitivity). Possibly the EARLY Norton Utilities as well.

Needs web browser

[ArmorFiend]

So who has the cahones to develop a standards-compliant web browser for this gui? Meet the new killer app. Same as the old killer app.

I've been poking around for a viable web-surfing configuration for an 8mb pentium-1 system, and there really is nothing out there.

Re:Needs web browser

[Linus Torvaalds]

So who has the cahones to develop a standards-compliant web browser for this gui?

Who has the cojones to develop a standards-compliant web browser full stop? Gecko ain't compliant and never will be. Same goes for every other browser.

I've been poking around for a viable web-surfing configuration for an 8mb pentium-1 system, and there really is nothing out there.

Try an older Slackware.

Uh - I always thought Seal had a nicer look...

[starseeker]

http://sealsystem.sourceforge.net/

Re:See Bill Was Right!

[Xenkar]

Actually a capital K is used for the Kelvin temperature scale in the Metric System. kilo uses a lowercase k.

The file size is 932 kiloBytes.
It is 305 Kelvin outside.

Re:Slow News Day?

[salesgeek]

Sure its nifty and all, but why does one person's small project make the news?

Puhleeeez. Every time Slashdot features any small project someone has to pop in and bitch that it's not important, who cares, why is /. covering it and on and on... Sit down and have a nice cup of shut the @##@$@ up and be happy that another project just got a little sunshine.

Incidentally, this project is actually useful and could be yet another killer open source application when it grows up. Do you know how many old computers are out there that are obsolete only because there's no free lightweight desktop OS with internet connectivity for them?

Frankly, the only way a small project becomes a big one is when other developers, supporters and users find out the project exists and can contribute to it.

I am not trying to imply that it isn't a cool project or worth doing, but that if his project makes the news so should the majority of sourceforge projects.

Of course your not, but you are bitter about something. Don't be a boo-bird.

Me first please.

At least you admit it, thought which is a step up from usual :)

Re:No screenshots

[nocomment]

you want screenshots? you got screenshots.

Re:GEM is a VERY interesting project.

[scotch51]

I worked with GEM a lot in 1987. It was plenty fast on an 8 mhz 286... ESPECIALLY when compared to Windows 3.1. Fast as in 10x to 20x as fast. Plenty fast for desktop publishing, which was my main app. GEM even ran on 21" displays.

In 20/20 hindisight, we're probably well served that Windoz is such a resource hog. Moore's law isn't enough to give us 4Ghz CPUs or a Gigabyte of RAM for $100... it also takes big market demand.

But imagine a world where an 8mhz 286 with 2-4 MEG of RAM was fast enough to do everything you do today. We could have been building on that for nearly 20 years.

Today I have a Gig of RAM and a 3Ghz CPU. It's barely adequate on many apps. This story certainly makes me ask "what if?"

Meh.

[stonecypher]

Contiki does more in about 30k of ram.