| ▲ | lproven 3 days 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 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/digitalRese... FlexOS eventually evolved into IBM 4680 OS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlexOS#4680_OS And that into IBM 4690 OS: 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 A FOSS one became MiNT, which is sometimes called FreeMINT. 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/afros.html 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/ It even supports some Amiga hardware now! There's a 4min demo here: 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. | ||