Iconic shells for multitasking workstations
Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, Solange Karsenty · 1988
Today's workstations running a multitasking operating system provide high level graphics toward user friendly interfaces. Microcomputers, on their side, implement graphic interfaces on monotasking operating systems. There are two differences between these machines: the operating system and the user interface to this operating system (the shell). Workstations still use standard shells (textual commands) but through a sophisticated graphic environment as a window manager, while microcomputers have their own graphic shell running on monotasking operating system.