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by jolmg 27 days ago
> Packard Bell Navigator is an alternative shell for the Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 operating systems

Huh. I thought the term "shell" generally referred to command line interfaces to the OS and that Unity's way of describing itself as a graphical shell was some "new" (2011) generalization of the term, but I guess there is at least this precedent for using the word like that.
2 comments
lewiscollard 27 days ago
> but I guess there is at least this precedent for using the word like that.

In Windows 3.1, the SYSTEM.INI had a setting called "shell" for overriding the default program started after Windows had loaded. Use of the word "shell" in this sense to describe a graphical interface dates back at least this far.

There was also a crude character-mode graphical interface called MS-DOS Shell, in 1988.

"shell" might be best generalised as "the first interactive program to run after boot" rather than "command line interface".

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omnibrain 27 days ago
It's the shell around the core.
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jolmg 27 days ago
Yes, but because CLIs came before TUIs/GUIs, I thought it only caught with CLIs until Unity (2011) adopted it for GUIs. Turns out there's been some GUIs that have used the term since Windows 3.1 and a TUI in 1988.
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VincePlatt 27 days ago
And right after starting that awesome little glimpse of the future, because weren't we all headed for the Max Headroom / Lawnmower Man inspired VR someday? It sure seemed inevitable - You would start up another wonder of the CD-ROM era like Encarta and just wonder at how they could have fit SO MUCH information on one computer. How could you have ever wanted for more?

Lol

Past me's head would have exploded just to have seen modern Wikipedia and GitHub back then.

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