3 ms·
Windows 1.0 is more similar to Norton Commander and DOS Shell (built-in to later DOS versions), as well as the Borland Turbovision products, in that it's someth
by senko 5y ago
Windows 1.0 is more similar to Norton Commander and DOS Shell (built-in to later DOS versions), as well as the Borland Turbovision products, in that it's something between a textual and graphical "shell" that you can manipulate files and run other programs off of.
At that time, it was nowhere close to being called an OS. It was a collection of GUI-ish tools for DOS. This started to change with Windows 3. That one still required DOS to function, but by that time it was clear DOS was the past on the PC and Windows (in some form) was the way forward.
- tyfon 5y agoWait, what version had DOS Shell? My last version was MS-DOS 6.22, but I can't remember that. Personally I used volkov commander. Edit: I see it was discontinued in 6.22, I wonder why.
- senko 5y agoYeah, my mind messed up the details (this was many moons ago!). Link for the curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Shell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Shell I guess it was discontinued probably because by that time MS was focusing on Windows as the operating system "shell".
- Narishma 5y agoI think it was still available in MS-DOS 6.22 but it wasn't installed by default anymore. You had to install it manually from the 4th optional disk.
- jbverschoor 5y agoWell not completely as I see it. Yes functionality is limited, but I was able to execute multiple applications and multiple instances of them. I could also switch between then. With Norton commander you could only spawn one process from NC. NC itself had quite a lot for built in tools (viewer, editor, comparison, 2 file panes). So I’d call windows 1.0 more an OS in terms of process “management”, UI, etc. No hardware layer of course.