Earlier this year HP announced a formal end-of-life plan for OpenVMS: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/06/10/204232/hp-discontinue-openvms

As such, it seems appropriate to include some screen shots of this final version (presumably 8.4).

HP OpenVMS is the final incarnation of the VMS operating system created by Digital Equipment Corporation originally for their VAX hardware. VMS was heavily used by large enterprise mainframes, and in its early days was often considered more solid and powerful than Unix. Underneath the hood VMS is a much different operating system than Unix, with many innovations that influenced later OSes.

The above screen shot shows the OpenVMS login. You can choose between a CDE/Motif desktop or a DECWindows desktop.

This is the default OpenVMS CDE/Motif desktop. Visually it is similar to the Solaris 8 CDE desktop.

The earlier VMS on VAX only had DECWindows, but VMS for Alpha systems added CDE/Motif.

Technically Motif is the underlying toolkit and window manger, while CDE is the desktop application and accessories. But the two tend to blend together, and OpenVMS refers to the desktop as just "Motif".

The toolbar at the bottom of the screen has icons for various tools, and menus with related options appears above each one.

Open application windows minimize to icons on the desktop.

This also shows the File Manager. Notice that OpenVMS uses a drive path syntax much different from Windows or Unix.