Today marks 35 years of Windows

[DZillaXx]

It's worth noting that Windows wasn't an operating system until Windows 95 was released. Before that, it was simply a graphical shell.

And even after that, it was a rather horrendous operating system, until Win2K and subsequent versions incorporated the OS/2 kernel. Windows flourished over its competitors for one reason only: Gates lavished love and attention on the software development community, who turned out software for Windows in droves.

Actually Windows 3.1 was very much a OS. It takes over most of the system from DOS, overwriting and reconfiguring memory in RAM away from how DOS configured it. While Windows 3.1 did have some DOS running in the background but File Management, some drivers, and APIs are all windows. Exiting Windows actually does a quick relaunch of DOS allowing it to put its files back into the memory locations in RAM it would normally sit. It really was a full 16bit OS that was actually pretty stable.

Windows 95/98 would have been pretty stable without all the legacy 16bit stuff they tossed in to keep compatibility up. But still just like MAC OS up till OS9 there is not much in way of Memory Protection like the hardware abstraction layer. But the Lack of these options allowed both systems to use little amount of RAM to run.

The biggest reason why Windows NT took forever to become mainstream is Memory Requirements. NT easily required a System to have 4x or more memory than the win 9x version.

I grew up with Both DOS/Win 3.1 and Apple. With a 486 as the family computer until it was replaced by the first gen iMAC and later a windows 98 Pentium machine my dad picked up second hand for MS Office. I still have a love for the old 486 and the great games, I still get my kicks playing Doom and Duke Nukem.

To this day I'm still windows on the desktop, Mac for Mobile, and Linux/unix on the server.

 

[dragosmp]

I'll add to the geekfest, enoyed reading all posts

My favourite must have been Win 2000. Had it from school and got it tuned with in the "For Workstations" mode. This way it ran like a champ until about 2004 for everything from shool, then work and gaming as well. Drivers were fun to install, as they were written for XP, but back then manually installing .ini files didn't seem like a big deal, was just what you did.

Runner-up spot goes to WinXP SP2, not the misery that was XP pre-SP2. XP pre-SP2 was nearly as bad as Vista pre-SP1.

3rd spot goes to Win95OSR2 (USB patch FTW), the first client version of Win that actually worked.

 

[arrowflash]

Even back in 1990, the topic of whether Windows 3.0 was an operating environment or operating system was already the subject of heated debates that I'd often rather steer clear of.

Personally, I think even Windows 98 was an operating environment and not an operating system. Even on Win98SE, DOS was still down there supporting everything. Windows NT 3.1 was Microsoft's first graphical OS, and Windows 2000/XP was MS's first consumer/end user graphical OS.

However at the same time, I'd say there are plenty of valid arguments for even Windows 3.0 being an operating system, so though I wouldn't agree, I respect these opinions.

 

[Prosercunus]

I am a year older than Windows. Shame.

 

[mark kram]

Windows 95 taught me to wait a few months until all the bugs were worked out, when a new version appeared. NT Enterprise Windows XP was rock solid, so was Windows 7. Those are my two favorites. Windows 10 took some getting used to, but I don't mind it as much as I used to. I don't care about what the screen looks like, I care about having a system that doesn't crash.

 

[Mnyama]

WINDOWS XP. Please go back. Microsoft literally breaks the computer all over again every month. STOP with the "improvements" that no one wants. Sometimes I wish I had an App!e computer.

 

[SenileOtaku]

It's worth noting that Windows wasn't an operating system until Windows 95 was released. Before that, it was simply a graphical shell.

And even after that, it was a rather horrendous operating system, until Win2K and subsequent versions incorporated the OS/2 kernel. Windows flourished over its competitors for one reason only: Gates lavished love and attention on the software development community, who turned out software for Windows in droves.

It was *still* just a graphical shell even in the MSWin 95/98/ME versions. Digital Research proved that by getting the W9x shell to run on top of DR-DOS. The only reason it seemed a full OS was that you couldn't get the underlying MS-DOS, or the GUI shell separately.

MSWin development reached it's peak at MSWin 2000. After that they started weighing the system with useless cruft, and totally messing up the UI.

Thanks, but I'll happily stick with Cinnamon Desktop on Linux.

 

[SenileOtaku]

Windows 10 clean installs, from .ISO on a USB drive, in minutes.

As long as you're counting those minutes in hundreds. Especially once you factor in the time de-crufting it just to make it barely usable.

 

[SenileOtaku]

...and today's Windows 10 is all but unrecognizable compared to Windows 1.0.

I don't know about that. MSWin 1-dot-zero had a flat, featureless interface, and dopey hamburger menus (they were often sarcasticly called "cooling vents" to keep the system cool "because it runs *so fast*"). Look at MSWin Ten, and once again a flat, ugly, featureless interface and dopey hamburger menus.

 

[dofaust]

Millions of people are happily using XP worldwide.
Many millions of people are using win 7 since its so fast.
Many more millions are happy using win 8 & 8.1 since its so STABLE and FAST.
Millions of people's work, worldwide, is frequently disrupted by win 10's untested updates.
Most of the above will NEVER ever buy a new version of windows, and, yearn for
their windows apps compatibility with some version of Linux.

What's the real reason for the decline in quality of MS software over the last 20+ years?
(We all know - its in the realm of common sense)

 

[hotrodseo]

It's worth noting that Windows wasn't an operating system until Windows 95 was released. Before that, it was simply a graphical shell.

And even after that, it was a rather horrendous operating system, until Win2K and subsequent versions incorporated the OS/2 kernel. Windows flourished over its competitors for one reason only: Gates lavished love and attention on the software development community, who turned out software for Windows in droves.

I mostly agree with you, and yet, for every other successful OS since Windows, adoption by the development community has been critical. Without collaboration, how could any OS ever succeed?

 

[Endymio]

I mostly agree with you, and yet, for every other successful OS since Windows, adoption by the development community has been critical. Without collaboration, how could any OS ever succeed?

Certainly; that was, in fact, my point. Whenever the subject of OS/2 arises, it's failure is chalked up to either "consumers were stupid" or "Microsoft was evil". But it was simply that Microsoft treated the development community as valued partners, whereas IBM made them just a revenue stream.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Microsoft Windows: The only real x86 monopoly

 

[seeprime]

As long as you're counting those minutes in hundreds. Especially once you factor in the time de-crufting it just to make it barely usable.

That's odd. I work on computers for a living. It never takes more than 20 minutes to clean install Windows 10 from USB stick, made using either Rufus or Media Creation Tool.