> Why were so many window managers dependent on DOS back then? I get the impression that developers were stuck in a paradigm that using x86 meant the use of som

> Why were so many window managers dependent on DOS back then? I get the impression that developers were stuck in a paradigm that using x86 meant the use of some form of DOS as a back-end. because that's all there was. sure there was crap like xenix and sco and later bsdi, and bespoke things like mwc coherent but nobody actually used any of those things really. when i was in high school i recycled an old 386 pc from the local university and set it up with linux and ip masquerade so that a single dial-up internet connection could be shared by a whole school computer lab. some rich kid's dad somehow got to take it home and then somehow got my phone number and then called me very angrily because i wouldn't tell him how to get out of this linux thing and so he could "drop to dos." most people didn't understand the idea of operating systems back then, dos and pcs were one and the same for most people. the idea that you could do something to your computer that would make it unable to run "pc compatible" software that you buy in boxes at the store was just utterly befuddling for the vast majority of pc users.