The
Best 22 DOS GUIs
That I've Found (So Far)
To finish off the DOS GUI series, here are my picks of the 22 DOS GUIs out of the 70 I tested that I think are well worth trying.
I think that around half of these would make a good daily driver for DOS, with the other half still being quite usable.
The list has been expanded to 22 to cater for the GUIs I tested after my "Best 11" posted on the Archive.
If you're interested in DOS GUIs download the VHD and try some out.
I've packaged the VHD so that it has all GUIs (except for one) that can be run from a single DOS menu (see screen shots below).
The exception to this is DesqView, which I've included as a separate VHD - the reason for this is that DesqView has a dependency on QEMM and rather than futz around with QEMM I've kept DesqView on a separate VHD (there's a menu option for DesqView but it simply explains the process for running DesqView).
A couple of the GUIs didn't play well with the DOS menu system (FastMenu and McShell) so I've added an explanatory blurb when these start up that explains their quirks with the option to quit loading the GUI and return to the menu.
The VHD also contains a couple of extra GUIs that I gave a miss to - OpenGEM v5 being one, as it has the 80's "I own this drive" approach.
The menu system also has an XTREE option so you can browse the VHD, as well as a VHD reboot option (may be needed for McShell).
The files I've uploaded are:
* VHD Demo of all GUIs _22_DOS_GUI_Worth_Trying_VirtualBox_Demo_VHD.zip
(This .zip includes a separate demo VHD for DesqView as noted above)
* Install files for all GUIs _22_DOS_GUI_Worth_Trying_Install_Files_Packed.zip
_22_DOS_GUI_Worth_Trying_Install_Files_Unpacked.iso
* Screencaps of all GUIs _22_DOS_GUI_Worth_Trying_Screencaps.zip
* 1 .zip file with all the above files (192mb)
The VHDs were created with VirtualBox 6.1.26 with DOS 6.22 and Cute Mouse installed.
Downloads:
< Click here to download a .zip file with VHDs for these 22 GUI >
< Click here to download a .zip file with packed install files for these 22 GUI >
< Click here to download an .iso file with unpacked install files for these 22 GUI >
< Click here to download a .zip file with screenshots for these 22 GUI >
or
< Click here to download 1 .zip file with all the above files included (192mb) >
Screenshots: (Use your browser's right click function "Open Image In New Tab" to see larger images)
And . . . as you're interested in DOS GUIs, here are a some GUI related links:
http://qbasicgui.datacomponents.net/
http://theguiblog.com/guipedia.php
http://toastytech.com/guis/index.html
https://guidebookgallery.org/guis
https://www.digibarn.com/collections/screenshots/
Kind regards,
shotter_nail
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