back to article Remember Windows 1.0? It's been 30 years (and you're officially old)

On November 20, 1985, Microsoft unveiled its graphical operating system. Windows 1.0 offered a new way to navigate a PC, clicking a cursor on various boxes rather than scrolling through lines of text in order to navigate data and applications. While arguably less efficient than a command line, the graphical user interface (GUI …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

    Actually, it depends on what task you're going to do. CLI too in many cases can be very inefficient.

    1. Ole Juul
      Coat

      Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

      "CLI too in many cases can be very inefficient."

      I'm not sure what those would be. With command completion, automatic cd to any directory on any drive, and a well chosen set of TSR's the efficiency is pretty high. You do know that the first thing you do when setting up a DOS machine is write batch files for all your tasks. Right? In fact you will probably just copy over a big pile of your old ones.

      I still use DOS most days and find it very efficient alongside KDE. And can report that it is only the things which DOS doesn't do which are more efficient on KDE. By the way, although the software wasn't written back then, now we have a complete TCP/IP networking stack that will run off a floppy and even using DOS 2.0. Of course, not everybody keeps up with the times.

      Mine's the one with the copy of Pocket PC Ref.

      1. DrXym

        Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

        "I'm not sure what those would be."

        DOS was essentially a single tasked system which kludges for very small TSR applications. It wasn't multi tasking in any sense whatsoever. Many of the leading DOS applications became veritable kitchen sinks of extraneous functionality in order to circumvent these issues.

        "You do know that the first thing you do when setting up a DOS machine is write batch files for all your tasks. Right?"

        I don't doubt it. It doesn't help unless your workflow is extremely rigid and inflexible.

        "I still use DOS most days and find it very efficient alongside KDE. "

        That doesn't make any sense. KDE is a GUI for Linux and Unix systems. If you don't like KDE you would open a command prompt which would typically be bash. I suppose you could launch dosemu or freedos via a VM in Linux though I don't see much point. If you're so dyed in the wool that you haven't advanced from DOS then why bother with KDE at all?

        1. Ole Juul

          Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

          That doesn't make any sense. KDE is a GUI for Linux and Unix systems. If you don't like KDE you would open a command prompt which would typically be bash. I suppose you could launch dosemu or freedos via a VM in Linux though I don't see much point. If you're so dyed in the wool that you haven't advanced from DOS then why bother with KDE at all?

          Why doesn't that make sense? I use tcsh on BSD and have numerous terminals open in KDE, those are my three favourite environments, but DOS is simpler and much quicker because of the low level control. I'm well aware of the limitations of DOS, but also the advantages. The utilities available for DOS are superb (check out the Simtel and other huge libraries) and it is worth using and jumping back and forth from the BSD to the DOS machines. With a modern network stack everything communicates so the lan is like one machine anyway. Don't know about Windows, to me Microsoft's real gem is DOS.

          1. werdsmith Silver badge

            Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

            I can't remember what it was called - possibly DR-Dos or Novell Dos but there was an alternative DOS for PCs that was a dosified clone of CP/M that did multi-tasking.

            1. James O'Shea

              Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

              Digital Research DOS (DR DOS), later bought by Novell, was a competing version of DOS. Novell DOS 7 had pre-emptive multitasking (compare to the 'co-operative multitasking' Apple and other had) which worked the way most multitasking systems do today. It basically could do most of what Win 95 could do, except that it was command-line and not a GUI, and it did it before Win 95 arrived. It was very nice once the bugs were worked out. Unfortunately there were a lot of bugs and it took a long time to get rid of the big ones, by which time Win 95 and its GUI was available and that was pretty much it. Novell sold it to someone else, I think Caldera. This resulted in MS going full Attila on Caldera, trying to rig it so that apps built for MS OSes couldn't work on DR DOS. That in turn resulted in a major lawsuit, which MS settled just before going to court, for an undisclosed amount. (Later revealed to be on the order of $280 million. Novell should have kept DR DOS and fought back against MS.)

              1. Richard Plinston

                Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

                > Novell DOS 7 had pre-emptive multitasking

                DRI had pre-emptive multi-tasking, multiuser and networking systems since 1978 with MP/M, MP/M2, MP/M-86, Concurrent-CP/M-86, Multiuser-DOS and various other derivitives. It was demonstrating Concurrent-CP/M-86, with full pre-emptive multi-tasking using virtual screens*, when MS announced MS-DOS 2.0.

                DR-DOS was originally built from Concurrent-DOS source code by removing multi-tasking and multi-user. It was preceeded by DOS+ which left in some multi-tasking.

                DR-DOS 6 added task-switching so multiple tasks could be loaded and switched between using EEMS (only the foreground task would run). Novell-DOS added back multi-tasking but it was a very poor imitation of Multiuser-DOS.

                > It basically could do most of what Win 95 could do, except that it was command-line and not a GUI,

                DRI's GEM GUI had sold a million copies before Windows 1 was released. It then wound up on Atari 512s as TOS.

                * A keystroke combination switched the screen between the running programs. On an IBM PC 8088 it required an EEMS memory card, such as a AST RAMPage. To do the context switching. It only required a small register block to be changed to 'bank switch' the program. The OS could recover disk access time to give CPU time to other programs (which Windows 3.x couldn't do).

          2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
            Trollface

            Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

            Don't know about Windows, to me Microsoft's real gem is DOS.

            This must be the equivalent of a Third Reich WarTech enthusiast telling everyone that the coolest tank out there was the Panzer 1

        2. asdf

          Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

          >KDE you would open a command prompt which would typically be bash

          Ok I can agree with everything else you said and I could even agree somewhat if you said Gnome isntead of KDE but KDE is still (for now) very much a POSIX in spirit UNIX flavor agnostic DE so assuming use of the insecure code hairball GNU shell mess that is bash is not necessarily safe. One of the big reasons OpenBSD is so safe out of the box is the wise choice to not include bash.

    2. channel extended

      Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

      Only to those who don't know it.

    3. Richard Plinston

      Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

      > CLI too in many cases can be very inefficient.

      Microsoft went out of its way to make the CLI useless. While DRI gave CP/M-86 through DR-DOS (and all its other OSes) decent command line editing and recall, MS did its best to make its inefficient. Windows 95/98 did actually have doskey.com that gave a halfway decent command editor but it was not installed by default and not even in the manual.

      At the 1983 COMDEC, Paul Allen outlined what features the 'next' version of MS-DOS (2) would have, including a help system (finally in MS-DOS 5) and command line editing. But they saw GEM being demonstrated and then started writing Windows 1, dropping most of what Paul announced.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

      I remember with dread all those crappy unscalable flat text files that you used to have to edit for config changes - thank god that has gone with the dark ages, and these days you have a proper database to store system config in...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

        "thank god that has gone with the dark ages"

        Unless you still use *NIX of course. It is something that could do with fixing as there is no granular auditing or control of system settings, and parsing text files doesn't scale very well.

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

        2. asdf

          Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

          >Unless you still use *NIX of course. It is something that could do with fixing as there is no granular auditing or control of system settings, and parsing text files doesn't scale very well.

          Solaris for example and even many versions of Linux include RBAC and centralized service configuration (SMF and systemd) so your knowledge may be a bit outdated.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

            "Oh yeah the Windows Registry was the bees knees especially early on."

            It was always better than text files.

            "Solaris for example and even many versions of Linux include RBAC and centralized service configuration (SMF and systemd) so your knowledge may be a bit outdated."

            It's still based on text files with no granular access control or auditing of individual settings.

            1. asdf

              Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

              >It was always better than text files.

              Maybe from a desktop management perspective but it sure wasn't for app developers fighting dll hell on deployed machines. Granted of course that was long ago.

              >It's still based on text files with no granular access control or auditing of individual settings.

              SMF isn't (see Service Configuration Repository) and offers granular access control (not sure about auditing but assume also) but yeah systemd once again fails to solve real world problems. Also I believe IBM is basically best in class about auditing configuration with AIX.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

                "it sure wasn't for app developers fighting dll hell on deployed machines"

                That has ZERO to do with how the system config is stored.

                "SMF isn't (see Service Configuration Repository) and offers granular access control"

                So *Nix finally dragging itself into the 21st century. Still doesn't cover anything like the whole OS though does it.

      2. asdf

        Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

        >a proper database to store system config in.

        Oh yeah the Windows Registry was the bees knees especially early on.

      3. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

        I remember with dread all those crappy unscalable flat text files that you used to have to edit for config changes

        Huh. I would've thought that would be a fairly effective troll here, but zero downvotes. Well, a good try, anyway.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    30 years of evil slurping

    I've never used Windows, but I know I wouldn't like it!

    1. Giles 2

      Re: 30 years of evil slurping

      Pretty blinkered outlook on life.......

      1. Bongwater

        Re: 30 years of evil slurping

        Seriously, I would have missed out on sushi, loose women, more sushi, and a movie about Goya if I had exhibited that type of attitude. For shame.

    2. James O'Shea

      Re: 30 years of evil slurping

      "I've never used Windows, but I know I wouldn't like it!"

      Are you _really_ that desperate for downvotes?

    3. John 104

      Re: 30 years of evil slurping

      @J J Carter

      I'm guessing you have. Point of sale? ATM? Embedded system much?

      Muwahahaha. Microsoft owns you and you didn't even know it! ;)

  3. Admiral Grace Hopper

    NT

    Windows NT was a good thing. Largely because it wasn't actually Windows as we then understood it and was instead a proper OS that was made to look like Windows.

    1. Stuart 22

      NT ... and Windows 2000

      The first successful re-incarnation of NT. The greatest desktop since WfW 3.11? (from which I made more easy dosh than anything since). I mean what has happened since? XP was just a finesse with added activation issues. Vista was a mistake in trying to go in a different direction restored by Windows 7. MS didn't learn and diverged again with 8/8.1. Oh, don't they find retreat painful?

      Win2k was great - is great. I still run legacy apps in win2k VMs. Faster and sweeter than it ever was. It will only die when the last app expires. Can't see that happening before its successors are history we may choose to forget.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: NT ... and Windows 2000

        Agreed 100%, win 2k was sweet.

        XP took a couple of service packs to get ok, and 7 really reminded me of 2k's no nonsense approach.

        Win 8 was as bad as everyone says and 10 is too dark and dismal - coupled with too many "things I may be interested in" like live stock quotes for shares I don't own and the weather in cities I've never been to.

        1. Danny 14

          Re: NT ... and Windows 2000

          after NT4 win2k server was a godsend in many ways. 2k professional was also a nice step up from W98 and (of course) no DOS to worry about. That helped and hindered some people but 2k was a nice step in the right direction.

          1. Vector

            Re: NT ... and Windows 2000

            "2k professional was also a nice step up from W98 and (of course) no DOS to worry about."

            That was the entire point. The PoS's that were Windows95 and Windows98 were created to provide a migration path from DOS to NT.

            When Microsoft released WindowsNT, the initial response from the IT community was "it's a very nice operating system, but it won't run all this software we currently have on the shelf and we can't afford to replace all that!" Win95 and Win98 were the shims that allowed that transition, being able to run both DOS and NT applications (even if poorly in many cases).

            Win2k Pro was only offered to businesses. The "consumer" version with which it was paired was Windows Millennium, but anyone who could get their grubbies on 2k eschewed that abysmal undertaking.

            The final unification took place with WinXP

        2. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

          Re: NT ... and Windows 2000

          But.... Mommy SatNad wants you to know all this crap. Didn't you get the Advert telling you that once you install W10 you are part of the MS Collective and that there is no escape....

          Joking aside this is just their headless chicken approach to development. Throws a whole shed load of stuff out there and a few things are bound to stick, that's what Cortana has been programmed to say....

  4. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Windows

    > Happy 30th, Windows.

    No! To this.

    1. Daniel von Asmuth
      Windows

      WOW!

      This Windows sported colors (when the MacIntosh was just black & white). By version 3.0 iit even supported overlapping windows and the cooperative multi-tasking and virtual management beat Apple's. How many of you are still using Windows 3.2?

      1. davidp231

        Re: WOW!

        "How many of you are still using Windows 3.2?"

        Depends on how many Chinese readers there are...

      2. ThomH

        Re: WOW!

        My take is that Apple's Classic OS probably peaked in 1991 with the introduction of System 7, not coincidentally approximately when Apple's many failed internal attempts to write a complete replacement began. They really missed a trick in moving to the PowerPC in not then writing something more modern and forcing 68000 apps into a sandbox, but I guess there's the list of things early-90s Apple could achieve with X developers in N years and the list of things it couldn't. Microsoft then leapt ahead until Apple was so far behind that it had to buy in a solution.

        ... but we can still thank the Apple of that period for Truetype fonts — not the idea so much, but the specific implementation and the help in market positioning. That Adobe Type 1 monopoly helped almost nobody.

  5. Adrian Midgley 1

    NT4 and the DOSSHELL

    were also worth remembering.

  6. Streaker

    Oh Lord I am old.....

    I remember using 1.0 in 1986 while on assignment in Canada.

    It had quirky printing on a dot matrix as I remember. Had to print stuff off and then fax it back to Blighty.... Happy Days

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: Oh Lord I am old.....

      Quote

      It had quirky printing on a dot matrix as I remember.

      Nothing new there then.... Still iffy about printers to this day especially networked ones. Here today, gone tomorrow even if reachable via ping or HTTP.

    2. TeeCee Gold badge

      Re: Oh Lord I am old.....

      Quirky printing was a feature on just about all printers until the first "winprinters"[1] turned up and WYSIWYG started doing what it says on the tin, rather then whatever the printer driver thought it ought to.

      [1] Native GDI to page support. With the benefit of hindsight it seems bleedin' obvious that as a printer prints a load of dots and the O/S has just rendered what you want on screen as a load of dots, shoving the latter load of dots onto paper kicks the shit out of translating it all into printer language and having the printer translate it back into dots, both for accuracy and speed.

      1. Danny 14

        Re: Oh Lord I am old.....

        Epson fx80 worked on just about anything.

        1. dc_m

          Re: Oh Lord I am old.....

          I it didn't, the Epson LQ drivers did.

          I had a (Colour!) Olivetti that used that, not sure if they ever actually produced a driver for it.

      2. Allan George Dyer

        Re: Oh Lord I am old.....

        @TeeCee - My printer and screen are not the same resolution, and don't have the same colour capability, so just shoving the dots from the screen to the printer ain't gonna work.

        "winprinters" still require the dots to be rendered again for paper, they just make the printer cheaper by requiring the printer driver to do that on the PC. It's also good for Microsoft - finding a driver for an alternate OS is difficult, so you're unlikely to switch, and encourages purchases of new printers when MS releases a new OS without drivers for "old models".

        Personally, I'd prefer an intelligent printer, supporting PostScript.

        [Edit] @Danny 14 - Yes, there is also merit in the "extremely dumb, very well defined" printer. I restrict my rant to the neither-one-thing-nor-the-other stuff between the extremes.

      3. Martin an gof Silver badge

        Re: Oh Lord I am old.....

        Native GDI to page support

        On RiscOS of course, a lot more expensive. "Laserdirect" used an expansion card in the computer fitted with an FPGA and connected directly to certain models of printer. I think the first was an Oki but the other two were Canons - I had an LBP-4. Cost me something like £1,200 back in 1989 or thereabouts, almost as much as the Archimedes did.

        In the days when full-page graphics were next to impossible in the 256k (or whatever) memory fitted to most laser printers (dot matrix didn't have the same problem because they only needed to "remember" one line at a time), the only way to get a page which mirrored what was onscreen was to have the two systems extremely tightly integrated. Systems which relied on PCL also relied on printer fonts matching onscreen fonts and so on and so on. Apple and Adobe did a tie-up and if I remember correctly the Mac's screen was essentially drawn by Postscript.

        Computer Concepts - creators of Impression and Artworks (which morphed into Xara) created the Laserdirect which used the "video" interface on the LBP-4, could produce an effective 600dpi from a printer that was officially 300dpi, produced on paper exactly what was shown on screen (bearing in mind that Acorn had "outline" fonts on the desktop earlier than anyone else) and did it a heck of a lot quicker than other methods.

        Only retired mine a few years ago, but the LBP-4 was built like a tank (I think it was manufactured by HP). It's in the attic now and I bet it still works.

        M.

        1. ThomH

          Re: Oh Lord I am old.....

          The original 1985 LaserWriter had a 12Mhz 68000; every Mac available at its launch and for the next two years had an 8Mhz 68000. Having the separation of Postscript — usually mapped to QuickDraw on the then-two-colour Mac — is more or less what made the first generation of desktop publishing feasible. Your slower computer with the approximately real-time display could stick with bitmapped fonts, and the resolutions and colour depth were low enough versus available RAM that you could use binary masking for complicated shape things like path clipping. Your printer which was allowed to take a few seconds to produce the image of a page could do so with a much more rigorous approach.

          ... plus it was just a helpful way to 'multitask' back when none of the high volume consumer OSes were very good at it.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    MSFT now...

    Windows 10 mobile - kaput after 30 weeks!

  8. Jean Le PHARMACIEN

    I preferred...

    DR GEM 3 Desktop to Windows 1

    Just saying

    1. Aqua Marina

      Re: I preferred...

      Ditto, of our 80 odd Amstrad 640s we had 1 windows machine no-one used, and 79 Gem and DOS Automenu machines. By the time of Windows 3 and Netware 3 (I think) all that had changed. We had a brief flutter with OS/2 when Escom shipped it as the default OS, before switching to 95 when that came out. Windows all the way since.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I preferred...

        Yes and I seem to remember it being on PCs a little before Windows One ?

    2. John Styles

      Re: I preferred...

      It's here if you want it http://www.owenrudge.net/GEM/

  9. caffeine addict

    I have no sound card in the office, so I have no fecking clue what anyone is saying, but those videos. Oh god...

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