3 ms·
Nice piece -- it's very good on the early history. It does, however, totally omit much of the later development. When Caldera released the source code, it als
by lproven 1y ago
Nice piece -- it's very good on the early history.
It does, however, totally omit much of the later development.
When Caldera released the source code, it also released the unfinished GEM/XM, a multitasking version.
http://www.deltasoft.com/news.htm http://www.deltasoft.com/news.htm
https://lunduke.substack.com/p/freegemxm-the-open-source-version https://lunduke.substack.com/p/freegemxm-the-open-source-ver...
Another version was X/GEM on FlexOS, DR's multitasking RTOS line, and at least some forms of UNIX.
http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/digitalResearch/flexos/flexos_386/Inside_Flexos386_Part_4_Computer_Shopper_199001.pdf http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/digitalRese...
FlexOS eventually evolved into IBM 4680 OS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlexOS#4680_OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlexOS#4680_OS
And that into IBM 4690 OS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4690_Operating_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4690_Operating_System
Later sold as Toshiba 4690 OS.
This supports a GUI, which I think is based on X/GEM, as well as TCP/IP networking, app development in Java, and more. It was sold until about 10 years ago.
I don't think I've ever seen a screenshot.
There have also been interesting later FOSS developments.
On the ST platform, TOS + GEM evolved in multiple directions. Some were proprietary, such as MagiC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MagiC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MagiC
A FOSS one became MiNT, which is sometimes called FreeMINT.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiNT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiNT
This became the basis of TOS 4, so Mint is Not TOS was redefined to mean Mint is Now TOS.
There's a complete distro of FreeMINT with the TeraDesk multitasking desktop, called AFROS. It targets a FOSS ST emulator called ARANyM:
https://aranym.github.io/ https://aranym.github.io/
https://aranym.github.io/afros.html https://aranym.github.io/afros.html
https://github.com/ragnar76/afros https://github.com/ragnar76/afros
Some very minimal firmware to emulate just enough of TOS to boot the MINT replacement OS was developed, called EmuTOS.
This eventually grew into a very complete FOSS clone of TOS+GEM, called EmuTOS:
https://emutos.sourceforge.io/ https://emutos.sourceforge.io/
It even supports some Amiga hardware now!
There's a 4min demo here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kYr5ftxyTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kYr5ftxyTA
EmuTOS went from a stub ROM that just reproduced something analagous to the kernel of MS-DOS to a full graphical OS, using the PC GEM source code that Caldera made GPL.
So there is a lovely full circle here, where the ST version continued for years after Windows killed off the PC version, but then the PC version got open-sourced and was used to revive and modernise the ST version in the 21st century.
There's been a lot more GEM-related development in the last decade or two than you'd expect. This makes me happy.