OSDev.org

Hi,

I was curious if anyone would consider a DOS based GUI as an OS. I suppose this would also include Win95 and 98 (and whatever other versions run over DOS).

The reason I'm asking is because I have written one that has it's own applications, cooperative multitasking, networking, and more. I would like to let people download it and check it out, but not sure if I should post it here, or if there is another board that deals with stuff like this.

Im no OS guro, but an gui is NOT an OS. If dos is what you are running underneath, then dos is your OS.

I should say it would depend on what your layer actually did. If it implemented a full blown networking system, file system, executable format, and multitasking, without depending on DOS, then I would be tempted to say that it would be an OS with DOS as its bootloader.

For a minute I tought it was about those textmode "gui", with text windows, like qbasic had.
If your gui is a ressource allocator, then it's an operating system. DOS runs in realmode, and if your gui jumps to protected mode, then it's an operating system. If you gui uses DOS for syscalls like Windows 3.0/3.11, then it's not, an operating system.

Alright, now I think I get the picture.

It does rely on DOS for mouse driver, packet driver (for networking), and needs a DPMI driver, as it's written with DJGPP. So I guess I would say it isn't an OS, but just a shell, with some nice features.

Dos users BIOS int's in about 50% of its functions, so maybe Dos is not a OS, also the first vers of linux depended on minix so was that a OS ?
http://kerneltrap.org/node/14002