A great resource when looking for older GUI shells/OS’s is Toastytech: http://toastytech.com/guis/index.html
Lots of info and screenshots to browse through there. And if you don’t find what you’re looking for you might find something else that’s interesting :)
q. name one ‘os’ that sucked donkey balls getting a functional tcp/ip stack runnin’
In those days, DOS was the OS. Windows and DESQview were just window manager apps that ran other apps.
hence the single quotes… i was just pullin a jeopardy
It looked like this:

It was pretty similar to modern Windows but without taskbar or Start menu.
Instead, you had a main window called “program manager” with icons in it to start other programs.
Do you have any specific questions about it?What is that? I don’t think that’s what I had in mind. I think it’s DESQview I was trying to think of. Anyway, not important… it was just driving me nuts I could not remember.
Sorry, I think I misunderstood your question.
And I had literally never heard of any Windows 3 alternatives up to now.To be fair, I was quite vague. I think there are multiple right answers… but I recalled one starting w/a ‘D’ and that’s what I was trying to recall.
I thought your question was clear for what it’s worth. If it was Windows 3.0 era you’re probably looking for ViewMAX (from the same company as DR-DOS, which was an MS-DOS compatible operating system, maybe that’s where the ‘D’ comes from?). I vaguely remember reading (or maybe watching) a good feature about it online a while ago but I can’t find it unfortunately.
Digital Research DOS, of my memory is right
Maybe GeOS/Geoworks?
I remember OS/2 by IBM which looked like Windows 3.11, and OS/2 Warp which looked like Windows 95. There were probably others.




