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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    PC-Geos / Geoworks / NewDealOffice (was: Re: Linux for the ...)
From:       Torsten Rahn <rahn () astrophysik ! uni-kiel ! de>
Date:       1999-07-16 10:21:28
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> Here is, in my most humble opinion, an example of a desktop that is
> absolutely, superbly, tailor-made for beginners:

> http://www.newdealinc.com

Yes, everyone who thinks that Linux is the best OS should have
 tried this one! YOU will love it! You could see that it was made by 
people who knew (out of C64 -experience) what you can do with 
an amount of 64 kb... and I'm sure that there are still some 
innovations in it that KDE could copy.
Here are the best-of- features of this beauty-beast PC-Geos:

-it's written almost completely in assembler and was strictly modularized.
The result: It is even usable on an old PC/XT with 640 kb -- We wrote our
college-newspaper on such a machine back in '92 using PC-Geos.
On a Pentium you have the feeling of suspend-to-disc because it needs
almost no time to start. (every computer should have this in BIOS, hehe!)
- You had *real*  WYSIWYG !!!!!
- You had REAL Postscript-drivers and Vector-fonts (URW ...) when Microsoft was
very impressed by itself to have pixel-fonts in Win3.0
- PC-Geos provided 256 characters per filename on the top of DOS while MS
  sticked to 8.3 in Win3.0 ...
- It is *very* beautiful!
- It came on 6 floppy-discs and used about 15 MB on your HD!
  (drivers like a vesa-driver had a size of 100kb IIRC ...)
- It's stable like hell.
- Its the most CONSISTENT environment I've ever seen!!!!!
- Drag&Drop of objects between every application.
- Inspite of this small amount of size you had everything you need included:
- PC-Geos included a wordprocessor with features comparable to Word2/6
 a Vektor-Drawing-app comparable to Corel-Draw 4 an adressbook, and 
later GeoDraw included even pixel-manipulating-tools and a spreadsheet was
added!
- when an application was started you could choose between 3 levels of
 menu-depth: when the first level was activated only the most important 
 menu-entries were displayed and so on ...
  -The marketing of Berkley Softworks (or whatever the name of the company was) 
was awful though ... and unfortunately it isn't free now --  but you can
download a demo-version from the given URL -- It's really worth a look!

> For those who don't know, "NewDeal" is PC-Geos, and it's not quite dead
> yet.  If you set your file manager to be "NewManager" and your User

Let's be honest As much as I still love it: It  *is*  dead :-(

> Interface to be "NewUI"  you have a system that has robust, bulletproof,
> EASY program launching and file management.  And when I say easy, I'm not
> talking about the horseshit Microsoft calls easy, either, but something
> that my I AND my three-year-olds can use and both be happy with.
> This system has some things that are terrific boons for newbies:
> (stick with me, I'm going somewhere with this)
> * It runs on top of DOS, so if your ignorant user simply switches off

It runs as much on top of DOS as Win95 ... It uses DOS to start but
replaces almost everything by its own code then ...

> the machine then there's never any harm done!
> * It's got big bright happy icons and great big happy buttons that
> clearly identify your programs and your files.  It clearly
> differentiates DOS programs vs. GUI programs.
> * It generally provides ONE way of doing something, so the learning
> curve is easier.
> * It's fast, fast, fast, fast, fast.

Yesyesyes and SlimSlimSlim!

> * Feature-wise, It's stripped down to the bare necessities, so newbies
>  aren't overwhelmed.
> * It's got a couple of features (like shutdown) that it really doesn't
> NEED, but are useful to have for training purposes.  I WANT my kids
> to learn to shut down, but I don't want to train them on an OS or
> filesystem that may be damaged if they forget.

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