The Best 22 DOS GUIs That I've Found (So Far) is a handsome and evidently growing collection of third-party graphical user interfaces you could use before Microsoft prioritized Windows, bolted it to DOS and made alternative pairings a difficult proposition. The author, Shotter_Nail, says some fifty more didn't make the cut.
I think that around half of these would make a good daily driver for DOS, with the other half still being quite usable.
Bearing in mind that this is a curated selection, if there's a theme it might be "crude yet legible." Lots of dead ends here which might yet have been explored further had we a couple of decades of hindsight. I could use the minimal, 95-like BreadBox now! The DOS-based Mac-clone desktops are something to behold, too: McShell seems the most complete and is screenshotted above. [via Two Stop Bits]
