DESQview/X Software Ports

DESQview/X (a.k.a. desqview/x, dv/x, dvx) is no longer widely available. So, in case that you have not seen it, or are new to DESQview/X, I thought that I would try to give a brief answer to the question "What is DESQview/X?"

DESQview/X was a product of a now-defunct software company called Quarterdeck. Quarterdeck was bought by Symantec, which no longer supports this product. For many people, DESQview/X is simply an X11R5 X-server. It turns any DOS-based 386-or-above PC into an X-terminal. It's more than just an X-terminal, however. As I see it, the most important additional features of DESQview/X are:


My port of Mosaic from 1996 (see below) is no longer adequate to view many web sites. (It doesn't support frames, for example!) So I've recently spent some time getting the Arachne web browser to run under DESQview/X. This didn't require any changes to Arachne -- just careful management of conventional memory and proper configuration of the network interfaces. The main difficulties are that Arachne requires 500KB of conventional memory to run and that Arachne cannot share the network interface card and driver that DESQview/X is using. But I got it to work, and thought I would share the steps that I took.
I've also started running both Internet Explorer 4.0 and Netscape Navigator Gold 3.04 under Windows 3.1, running in an X window. (I was unable to get Netscape Navigator 4.07 to work.) The trick, as in running Arachne, is to use separate network cards for Windows and DESQview/X. To load the packet drivers for Windows, I modified winx.dvp so that instead of launching winx.exe, it instead launches WINX.BAT. This file first loads a packet driver for the second network card, then loads the Trumpet virtual packet driver for Windows, and finally runs WINX.EXE, as shown below.

The same approach can be used to load a packet driver for Windows 3.1 when run from DESQview/X in "direct" mode.


The hints below may help you get the most out of DESQview/X, Version 2.10 (the most recent version).

The following programs all run under DESQview/X Version 2.10.