http://www.osnews.com/story/10301/DESKWORK_-_The_Sci-fi_in_DOS Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:50:50 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Is this an ad? Thu, 14 Apr 2005 20:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Actually, 15 years ago might be more realistic.

I see no point in this today.

Does it have a TCP/IP stack? Will it connect to the internet? If not, then it isn't of much value. Thu, 14 Apr 2005 20:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? There's always a point to anything that is done, otherwise it wouldnt be done. Plus, DOs still has its niche.

Now, for the thing itself.. I don't know if I'll use it, but it's great that _someone_ is trying out "metadata only" filesystem without folders. We'll at least get to find out if it's a workable solution! Thu, 14 Apr 2005 20:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Does it have a TCP/IP stack? Will it connect to the internet? If not, then it isn't of much value.

At some point, Linux and Windows didn't have a TCP/IP stack either. That being said, I tend to agree with you. Other than futzing with with a really old computer, there doesn't seem to be much use for this, IMHO. I don't read German, so maybe there's some fantastic usabilty gems hiding in there... Thu, 14 Apr 2005 21:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Does it have a TCP/IP stack? Will it connect to the internet? If not, then it isn't of much value."

You didn't read it all... he said it did not have such support yet... so you comment is a bit of oximorones...

"I see no point in this today."

Well, for most that is so true... for the ones that use DOS like OS's... well, it will be, at least to see what it is all about...

It is for those interested... Thu, 14 Apr 2005 21:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Its LCARS.

Might work out nicely for devices with limited displays, interfaces, and most of all limited power. Thu, 14 Apr 2005 21:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I was just about to say the same thing! It looks a lot like LCARS...they must be fans of Star Trek... Thu, 14 Apr 2005 21:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? just love it! Thu, 14 Apr 2005 21:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? You people are idiots. Really, the only reason OSNews is bad is because of the people that comment like you. If you have no interest in a particular project then don't fucking comment on it. It's not hard. Did this guy say he is trying to dominate the world with his project? NO. Did he say that its a competitor to windows/mac/linux? NO. Did you even read the article? Probably not.

This guy is probably just fucking around with computers (like all of you/me) do. You have no project, except for to bitch about other projects. He DOES have a project and figured he would share it with the rest of the world. What is useless to you isn't always useless to everyone else. Every heard of a hobby?! Go back to changing your icons and playing with themes you pink sock.

Sorry for ranting, but these posts seem to be in every article on here now.

-adam Thu, 14 Apr 2005 21:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Well said. I'm sick of these comments too, but I just ignore them rather than keep it alive by replying. Unfortunately, in the case of many trolls, they thrive on angry replies, and the only way to really get rid of them is for everyone to ignore - which is hard to accomplish in a free forum like the internet. Thu, 14 Apr 2005 21:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Mod-up parent... Mod that to an article on the main page, with all the swearing please . Then start kicking people for posting stupid things about projects.

I'm with you adam, you're exactly right!

I like the pink sock comment, but I don't understand what it means? Pinko? Thu, 14 Apr 2005 21:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? i too think this is a cool project. who cares if 99.9% of the world never use it and 99% of the world never use it. its one mans project, nuthing more. side note: isnt that how linux started? Thu, 14 Apr 2005 21:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? A Pink Sock is probably the most disgusting thing in human history. I'll refrain from explaining. It's putrid. A little google search will help you find it if you want. You've been warned though!

-adam Thu, 14 Apr 2005 21:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? i meant 99% of the world hav never heard of it Thu, 14 Apr 2005 21:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Yeah, I like it the way it is. This shows why things sucks today, with all that pseudo-3D GPU and 3 HT UltraPower CPUs on the market running those crappy pseudo-modern OS. AMIGA-OS was a modernOS ten years ago using a couple of Mhz right in your face! go figure it out!
Anyway, I think theres still a niche for that kind of systems. Now, you must implement the tcp/ip stack.


Gutten Glück mein freunde :-)
jay Thu, 14 Apr 2005 21:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I love the Star Trek theme its got going! Thu, 14 Apr 2005 22:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I like it, that's a nice project I'll try it on my good old 486. I hope there will be an english version

Keep up the good work Thu, 14 Apr 2005 22:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? this is what hobby OSes are about.
finally an OS that uses the same organization system as me. Thu, 14 Apr 2005 22:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I like the look of this project. I don't speak German at all, but still, it will be fun to play around with.

I wonder if it will run under DosBox? The author said it works with MS-DOS and DRDOS, and I've never had an issue running anything under DosBox before. I wouldn't need TCP/IP; I could download anything I needed using the host OS (Linux) to a DosBox-mounted directory.

With an English translation, I could even see using this to set up a kid-friendly computer, especially for a kid that enjoys watching Star Trek!

Also, I just checked out the German website, translated by Babelfish. There's a very detailed page on connecting a Siemens S65 cellphone to the system. This is very interesting to me; my cellphone is a Siemens S56, which from what I can tell is a very similar phone. I use Infrared (and soon Bluetooth when I get my iBook), but all I can do right now is send MIDI ringtones and pictures to the phone, and go online with my PDA. It looks like the Deskworks software gives you full control over the phone. That's something I've been wanting to play around with for a while! Thu, 14 Apr 2005 23:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? And it's great to see an alternative operating system thriving. DOS is still alive in the various free software variants, and it's certainly plausibly that with a project like this it could become a viable platform for niche areas and enthusiasts. Fri, 15 Apr 2005 00:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? lol does anyone else see the irony of DESKWORK's philosophy (of no icons, eye candy, etc) vs the website's aqua-like theme? Fri, 15 Apr 2005 01:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? this is LCARS:

http://www.telcomax.info/dans-software-germany/bilder/screens/les.j...

An Editor and a Media Player are available in this design and yes they both display the current stardate Fri, 15 Apr 2005 01:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Just for the people in the 1st world that doesn't know this. There is people using 386 machines or still using Amiga, and most of them can't afford an upgrade like you. Also, there's another DOS, http://freedos.org which I guess could be used to run DESKWORK. Fri, 15 Apr 2005 01:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? interesting gui. anything to get away from the blasted mouse! That is one of the worst inventions ever made and is single handedly responsible for a myriad of carpal tunnel cases. Fri, 15 Apr 2005 01:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? This one is better imho

http://www.pldos.pl/windos/screen.htm Fri, 15 Apr 2005 01:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I always suspected the Enterprise ran DOS

Seriously, it looks pretty interesting. Since its built on DOS that means its a program, right? I wonder how hard it would be to port it to linux? Could be a very interesting project.

-Mike Fri, 15 Apr 2005 02:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? It looked like it was maybe connected to a Sony Cybershot in one of the screenshots. In DOS? Very cool. I'm putting together an AMD 486DX/100 in a couple of weeks for my old games. Might be worth a try. Fri, 15 Apr 2005 02:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? well tossed on a little 200 mb FAT32 partition and it installed and ran through XP no issue, no need to restart or anything just click on instal, type W, select your drive and then hit enter a couple of times, although the german makes taking advantage of the meta data difficult without a good deal more trial and error, it played a CD fine though so it is working. nifty. just thought i'd post to say that it works under XP. Fri, 15 Apr 2005 02:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? When I typed setup it filled the window with light-blue stripes. I don't know if it is a setup error with dosbox, because this is he first time I have used the program.

Any ideas would be nice (my german is not even close to good enough for the forums); seems like a cool litle operating enviroment (I guess that would be the right term?)

~Cramit Fri, 15 Apr 2005 04:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I've seen better GUI's for DOS, and no, Winblows is not one of them.

Infact there are some out there that look and act a lot like Win95, but are only a few k in size. Kinda reminds me of the Amiga days once again, it is a shame no one knows anything about conserving resources anymore. Fri, 15 Apr 2005 04:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? just curious under what liecence it is released?

nice work BTW Fri, 15 Apr 2005 04:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? i really dig the interface, minimalist lcars aproach, i think it's really cool

man, it'd be cool to have a shell for nt based windows systems like this...

thanks for posting this! i had not heard of this project before reading the article, i love hearing about small niche market operating systems like this

much kudos!! Fri, 15 Apr 2005 04:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? It's an operating system build upon DOS, just like older Windows versions were build upon DOS

Thus those versions were not operating systems, just as this DW is not one either. Fri, 15 Apr 2005 06:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Did this guy say he is trying to dominate the world with his project? NO. Did he say that its a competitor to windows/mac/linux? NO.

There are videos on the Deskwork homepage ('Presse' -> 'TV'). In the third one Konstantin Koll sais that he sees himself as serious competitor of M$.

Genie und Wahnsinn ... Fri, 15 Apr 2005 07:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Although I don't understand german that well, I must say that the info on the site look impressive. I always thought that those hobby project laked good design backgound. This doesn't apparently.

Just take a look at the cleartype page. Now if every subsystem of all OSS projects was documented in that manner the world would be a better place =)

What I don't get however is why he picked dos as a platform. Surley all the great software availible for some of the more "alive" platformes would be usefull. Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? As Konstantin mentioned in his forum, Deskwork doesn't run in DosBox or within FreeDOS due to some differences compared to MS-DOS. He explains why on his Page (German only). It has something to do with memory managing AFAIK (I'm not a DOS expert at all). Fri, 15 Apr 2005 15:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Coupled with the freedos propject, Deskwork looks like a very nice add-on.

If these guys can create the TCP and Network tools so that they can run outside of the Deskwork Framework, the flexibility alone would add alot of additional punch to DOS Environments. Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Hello, you can only use Deskwork under MS-DOS 6.22.

And why not learning german to use Deskwork ?

Iam german and i must learn English to understand this, too.

But iam can not understand perfectllay all was i read, spoken, and meaning of THIS Languages !!!

Greetings from a Member of this World. Fri, 15 Apr 2005 20:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Hmm this reminds me a bit of Contiki
Btw, maybe the IP stack used in contiki might be interesting...
as for the drivers, there are already a huge set of drivers for DOS based apps (cynr or something... aka "packet drivers"). The DOS VNC viewer uses them for example. Fri, 15 Apr 2005 22:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Desktop2
http://wwwisg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/~fritter/idx-desktop.html

Seal
http://sealsystem.sourceforge.net/about.php Fri, 15 Apr 2005 22:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I think seal 3 years back was quiet good but could not attract developers for further development.
Further qube released by same person who developed seal was good.looked queit professional.
Had multitasking support 24bpp colour support,mp3 ,simple html browser
lacked good development to develop further.
anyways dos now is dead.maybe porting these projects on linux would help Sat, 16 Apr 2005 06:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? @ all

Ask the vendor of DESKWORK for an English version of it ...!?

Here you can mail it: http://www.deskwork.de/KONTAKT.HTM

Member of the World Sat, 16 Apr 2005 09:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? mabey they could use it in a startreck movie. Sat, 16 Apr 2005 19:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments