[simianpirate]

I believe you are speaking of Tabworks?

[lproven]

HP had several innovative GUIs of its own, before Microsoft destroyed the market with a good enough one of its own.

NewWave was its first and long predated even Windows 3.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewWave

HP was once a UI and GUI pioneer and did other quite radical stuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_User_Environment

TabWorks wasn't an HP thing -- it just bundled it with some consumer Compaq kit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TabWorks

[a1o]

I had to Google and it does look like it, I remember the computer would boot into it and it also had space for a few (three?) icons outside the tabs (like in the “desktop”). It was a cool interface!

[xhrpost]

That sounds correct, I know what the GP is describing, very first computer for me. I was actually rather unfamiliar with the basic Win 3.1 desktop.