Deskware

Deskware Limited is a French technology company founded in 1982 that made the Desk Shell series of operating systems.

History

Advanced technology (1979-1982)

Around early 1979, a French man named:"Gabriel Matthew", was playing some video games on his computer and realized the fact that many systems have a command line instead of a graphical user interface. Seeing an oportunity, he partnered up with IBN and began development of a text GUI designed for IBN computers. In 1981, after the release of IBN TUI 1.0, Matthew rereviewed his contract and realized he wasn't getting a lot of profit from the project, he asked IBN to do give him a bigger share of the profit. IBN refused and Matthew left IBN in 1982 and began his own company 'Deskware' which started development of Desk GUI 1.1. IBN in the meantime was developing their own next version, named IBN TUI 2.0. In 1985 IBN TUI lost support with the release of Progressbar 1 and was merged later into the PB/2 project. Deskware works hard to redesign their user interface and they release their product in 1982 for PB-DOS and Pyrus DOS. Shortly after IBN sues them over violating copyright, but the court rules in favour of Deskware.

Growing audience (1982-1985)

With better user interfaces, many unexperienced people who used computers rushed to the stores to get a copy of Desk GUI. Pyrus tried to do replicate the sucess with Pyrus Lize released in the same year but it didn't work out for them. In late 1984, Deskware Next begins development meant to bring a true second version of the Desk GUI series. It is released 1 year later with some improvements, and grayscale support. They also added compatibility with other operating systems.

Growing competition (1985-1992)

With Progressbar 1 releasing, this began a new era in the history of Deskware. They could no longer simply release any features at any time they wanted, they now had to release them before anyone else did. Despite this, Gabriel decided to switch from a new version every 2 years, as originally planned instead of 3 years to make sure each feature was both polished and released in time. They developed Deskware+ released later as Desk GUI 3.0. It added EGA support and a cleaner user interface in order to keep up with Bar System and Progressbar. Deskware also had a plan to ditch the shells entirely and make their own operating system but the plan would only continue in 1993. The competition was begining to catch-up, Neo-Level Technology with NL-DOS Shell 3.1 COLOR, Kelper with KP-DOS 3.0, Progressbar with Progressbar 3, Pyrus with BarOS 7 and finally in 1991 ComLab with CL-DOS 3.0 GUI Edition. The fight was however not impossible. The company also decided to release its own suite of applications, one of the first being TelShell, a colaboration with PGT to bring the TelNet to Desk GUI 3.0 and Progressbar 2 which only released in France. The era ended with Gabriel retiring on December 19, 1992.

Building up a new OS (1992-????)

On December 20, 1992, Gabriel's son, Daniel took control of the company. He belived that the company needded to distance away from PB-DOS and others if they wanted to fully compete with everybody else. So in 1993, development of an OS began. In the meantime a part of the team were developing the next Desk Shell, meant to release in 1994. Another part of the team decided to begin developing other software for the company.

To be continued

Products

Operating Systems/Shells

Name	Version	Release Year	Codename	Base	Progressbar alternative	Pyrus alternative	Firedog alternative
IBN TUI versions
IBN TUI 1.0	1.0	1981	N/A	PB-DOS	N/A	N/A	N/A
IBN TUI 2.0	2.0	1983	IBN TUI II		PB-DOS	Pyrus DOS
Classic GUI versions
Desk GUI 1.1	1.1	1982	Deskware GUI	PB-DOS; Pyrus DOS	PB-DOS	Bar System 1 → 2	N/A
Desk GUI 2.0	2.0	1985	Deskware Next	PB-DOS; Pyrus DOS; CL-DOS	Progressbar 1	Bar System 3 → 4	CL-DOS 1.0 → CL-DOS 2.0
Desk GUI 3.0	3.0	1988	Deskware+	PB-DOS; CL-DOS	Progressbar 2	Bar System 5	CL-DOS 3.0

Fan-made

Name	Version	Release Year	Codename	Base	Progressbar alternative	Pyrus alternative	Firedog alternative	Concept creator(s)
Classic GUI versions
Desk GUI 3.0	3.0	1996	Deskware Codename: Forest	From scratch	Progressbar 95	BarOS 9	CL-Shell 6.0	ClippitMS, CLIP159Modding, and Arturo

List of CEOs

Name	Time frame
Gabriel Matthew	1981-1992
Daniel Matthew	1992-????

Deskware
Desk GUI
IBN TUI	TUI 1.0 • TUI 2.0
Classic Desk GUI	GUI 1.1 •  GUI 2.0