Desktop 2 - DOS @ its best
 
WHAT'S NEW ?
 
September 23, 1998
SOURCE CODE RELEASED UNDER GPL: In the hope that there will be someone who is interested in a further development of DESKTOP and who, furthermore, wants to volunteer himself for this, I made the source code of the English and German release available under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Due to my studies, I do not longer have the time to maintain and to develop future releases of DESKTOP. However, if someone seriously wants to care about DESKTOP, I'll be glad to support him with the necessary information.
     The source code including all resources can be found in the download section. Borland C++ 3.1 and Borland TASM are required to build the application.

September 18, 1998
ENGLISH RELEASE AVAILABLE: Due to the great job of the guys listed below, I'm pleased to announce the first release of DESKTOPv2.62e. Please consider this first release to be a BETA release. I don't had much time to test all of the functionality DESKTOP provides.
     Special thanks go to:

  • Sarah Bown
  • Catfish (Nathan Stanley)
  • Pop (Paul Stanley)
  • Mark Ray
 
WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR ?
 
DESKTOP is a graphical user interface for DOS, which ones used to be a commercial shell like MS-WindowsTM 3.0 or GEOSTM. However, due to the dominance of MS-Windows 95, we were forced to stop publishing the program, so it's free now.
     DESKTOP is somewhat in the middle between MS-Windows and Norton CommanderTM, and mainly consists of the following components:
  • Hierarchical program manager
    • Lets you group your software and documents together by topics
    • Supports multiple layers
    • Includes over 100 ready-to-use icons (MS-WindowsTM Icon format)
    • Visual Schnauzer for the icons
  • Sophisticated file manager
    • extensive Drag&Drop functionality
    • all functions of file and directory management
    • virtual directory windows
    • disk operations, such as:
      • Format, Copy, Compare, Full&Quick Erase, Recover, Verify ...
      • Search for files on drives
      • Identify, Show FAT
  • Block-oriented editor
    • Cut, Copy, Paste
    • Shares the clipboard with the other textfields in DESKTOP
  • The inevitable CD player
  • Calculator
  • Screensavers
  • Config tool
  • etc.

     Everyone likes screenshots: (click to enlarge)
Program manager File manager
Program manager (25 KB) File manager (34 KB)

     Requirements:

  • IBM PC with 286 processor or higher
  • VGA graphics card
  • 640 KByte RAM (2 MB recommended)
  • DOS 3.3 or higher
  • Mouse and running mouse driver
  • Extended Memory is also used if available (requires HIMEM.SYS)
 
OK, HOW CAN I GET MY HANDS ON IT, AND WHAT ABOUT THE INSTALLATION ?
 
Just click on one of the links in the Ready-to-install section to download a compressed copy of the distribution disk. Before you may start to install DESKTOP, you need to unpack the files (e.g. pkunzip -d dsk2-lang.zip) in a temporary directory, such as C:\TEMP. After that, just change into this directory and key in INSTALL. The install program launches and tells you what to do next.
     The command to start DESKTOP after the installation is DBD.BAT.

 
WHAT ARE THE USERS SAYING ?
 
Instead of preying how great and handy this program is, I decided to let the users tell you what they think about DESKTOP2. ;o)

i love your gui!!! it's great! my only problem is that i can't read german so i am forced to navigate using either trial-and-error or my trusty german-english dictionary (which is not well equipped at translating computer jargon!!) anyway, this is probably a lost cause and i understand you not wanting to go through all the hassel of translating it -- i was just wondering!! but all the same, great job!! it's a wonderful piece of software!!

Michael Moore

I came across your "Desktop" program and thought it was excellent. However, despite my name, I don't speak German! Which is a pity because "desktop" is the best DOS shell and a better file manager than Windows FileManager or Explorer.

K.H. von Kaufmann

I have just downloaded a copy of Desktop v2.61 and found this to be an excellent program.

Keep up the good work.

Pete Edwards

⌐ 1991-98 Felix Ritter  [ fritter@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de ]