OS/2 Workplace Shell ... for Windows!?

[@rantsfromcanada1656]

When I was at university in the early 90s we were running Windows 3.11 on all the lab computers. I came across the OS/2 Workplace Shell for Windows and liked the way it actually treated my desktop like a desktop... so I installed it on my account. I got some confused looks.

[@casualretrocollector]

I love your Sunday recurring videos. I look forward to it each week! Thanks again for a great one.

[@THEPHINTAGECOLLECTOR]

You're welcome!

[@hopejr]

I remember a friend of mine installing this on his dad's computer in the mid-90s and getting grounded for messing up the computer.

[@THEPHINTAGECOLLECTOR]

Ouch, unpleasant memories ;)

[@MegaManNeo]

That's a part of... well... Windows history that people couldn't think of anymore today. I remember in the early 2000's when XP was the new hot thing and I still had a Windows 98 PC, I found out about something called Aston Desktop (I believe that's what it was called). It was shareware and being a poor boy in 6th grade I obviously couldn't afford it but it allowed my PC to have Windows XP style UI which I really enjoyed for how long the trial phase lasted. These days, the only place to encounter such a thing without having OEMs putting all kinds of bloatware on your system is Linux with all its kinds of desktops.

[@OCTAGRAM]

Same here. And I had used StarDock WindowBlinds

[@Thales_WH]

I remember the Aston Shell, it was nice. It would definitely be worth making a video. I still have the 1.9.4 and 1.9.2 full version installers (+26 themes). I don't know if there was a newer one, then I didn't follow it anymore.

[@RFGSwiss]

Sali collector Although I had OS/2 and Win3.11 at the time, I was not aware of this replacement shell. very interesting. Thank you!

[@THEPHINTAGECOLLECTOR]

Immer gern!

[@SamK4074]

All this Windows/NT 3.x & OS/2 stuff predates me (born in the mid-90s, grew up with Windows 98 and XP mostly) but it is incredibly cool to see you show it off and I would have loved having a play with it all back then if I was born a little earlier. I'm super glad I found your channel, and I look forward to seeing what you release each week. Thank you!

[@THEPHINTAGECOLLECTOR]

You‘re welcome!🙏

[@ceebee23]

remember it well... remember OS/2 as well of course.... and when MS didn't try and lock you out of modifying the UI ...

[@securityteam]

Ohhh, I fondly remember WPSfW - it used to be my default window manager (...can I say that? Well let's use 'shell') when I couldn't afford to buy a beefy machine just to run Windows NT4 or 95. Still love the customisation options, eg. you could set a custom window background for each folder. Also, drag & drop worked almost as good as in OS/2, at least in lots more places than standard Windows. Those were the days...

[@Aeduo]

It's neat they went halfway to providing localized command line parameters, but to not provide some kind of method for an application to fetch what they should use in an automated way is kinda usual microsoft, heh. Windows 3.x always feels like everything is a half-measure.

[@DankUser]

I love this channel so much ❤❤

[@THEPHINTAGECOLLECTOR]

Thanks 🙏

[@ruben_balea]

Translating everything was a bad idea. On Windows 10 shell folders are localized but at filesystem level everything is in English and there's a bug or feature when you open a new explorer window from the command line. If you launch something like "c:\users" from the Run dialog* on a non English system it will say "Users" in the address bar instead of the localized version of the "Users" folder that is used if you go to "c:\" and open the localized "Users" folder from there. The subfolders will still have their localized names but the part of the path you specified in English will remain in English, if you launch "C:\Users\Public\" then the address bar will have both "Users" and "Public" in English but if you open a subfolder it will show the localized name in the address bar, it will change to all English if you click the address bar to edit it but if you click on the folder contents again the address bar will come back to the mix of localized and not localized folder names. For example in my Windows 10 in Spanish if I go to c: and navigate to c:\users\public is will be translated in the address bar to: "Este equipo > Disco local (C:) > Usuarios > Acceso Público" But if I run c:\users\public it will be a mix of English and Spanish like: "Este equipo > Disco local (C:) > Users > Public" and if I open a localized subfolder like "Imágenes de cuenta públicas" it will display "Este equipo > Disco local (C:) > Users > Public > Imágenes de cuenta públicas" which is the equivalent of "Este equipo > Disco local (C:) > Usuarios > Acceso Público > Imágenes de cuenta públicas" and its path is "C:\Users\Public\AccountPictures" Then if you have Explorer configured to show the full path in the title bar it will always show the English path there but otherwise it will change from English to localized subfolder names as you open subfolders but will also come back to English when it reaches the path that you specified in English in the command line. *If you open CMD and then run _start c:\users_ it will also use English folder names but for some reason if you run _explorer c:\users_ it will use translated folder names. 🤷‍♂

[@Honeybearsphone]

I had a Windows 3.11 system I used Calmira shell replacement on, made it look and function like Windows 95 even included long file name support. I believe they had a variant that would make it look like Windows XP as well though it's been a few years so I could be wrong about that.

[@THEPHINTAGECOLLECTOR]

Did you read my secret story book for the end-of-may episode!?!? ;) ^^

[@msdosm4nfred]

Yesterday I went to a retro video gaming convention and my heart has gone on, because I saw some old rigs, like the KC 85/4, that was so much hardware pr0n.

[@judewestburner]

I genuinely knew nothing of this before your video. I did not know this existed. Why was it a thing???

[@pianoman4Jesus]

Back in the day, I tried deploying WPS for Windows to at least one client. Unfortunately with production use, the WPS for Windows kept corrupting itself. Proved unreliable, just like MS DOS + Windows 3.1 native anyway.

[@SirKenchalot]

I remember back in the 90s that those hwo were less experienced and more nervous of using computers freaked out when small changes occurred in the UI between different versions, so if you could reduce the learning curve for those who had to use win and OS2 that might help. I never knew youcould inspect the launcher in Control Panel or is that just in OS/2?

[@THEPHINTAGECOLLECTOR]

You mean how Control Panel launches all the different applets?

[@SirKenchalot]

@@THEPHINTAGECOLLECTOR Yes, I don't recall that being a thing in Win 3.1 but maybe I just never experimented enough. I do recall wanting to get screensavers working so I found the .scr files and renamed them to .exe and that brought up their control panel settings but didn't launch the screensaver as I wanted. Eventually I found how to launch a screensaver though and my young mind was blown.

[@NiceCakeMix]

I remember this back in the office at the time, I didn't get it on my desktop as I had NT3.1 and NT3.5 on mine so I don't believe it would work on my PC but others in the office had it if I remember correctly

[@THEPHINTAGECOLLECTOR]

Hmmm ... god catch. I actually didn't try if it would run on NT 3.x. Propably not, but still worth a try ...

[@NiceCakeMix]

@@THEPHINTAGECOLLECTOR it might work as NT3.1 could run 99% of windows 3.1 software but I bet this one would give errors

[@Galaxy.Windows]

Workspace shell aslo works on Windows 95-Me

[@THEPHINTAGECOLLECTOR]

It does "somewhat" run, as depending on certain actions performed, it just crashes out. One of the best examples is to run a DOS window, which will cause a GPF as it tries to run winoldap and kills the entire WPS desktop.

[@austinstitzel]

I'm going to guess that you are an Aries.