Windows 10 Announced

[kkt]

The history of Windows is weird.  It was originally a GUI for DOS.  This continued through Windows 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, and Windows for Workgroups 3.11.  Microsoft had created a standalone OS called OS/2 in collaboration with IBM, but when this relationship went sour, they revamped the product into Windows NT 3.5.  This line continued with NT 4.0 and NT 5.0 (more commonly known as Windows 2000).  The old DOS-based line continued with 95, 98, 98 SE, and then finally died with ME.  The NT line was then rebranded and continued with XP, XP SP2, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, 7, 8, Server 2012, 8.1, and 10.  Technically the product called "Windows" died long ago, but the name lives on.

Windows NT was not a revamping of OS/2, it was a rewrite of Digital Equipment Corporation's VMS, which was the OS for the VAX supermini.  DEC's Cutler and most of his group left DEC for Microsoft, both DEC and Microsoft got to use the Windows NT code, although DEC wasn't able to market it for their hardware very successfully.

IBM stopped developing and marketing OS/2, but continued supporting it for existing customers for quite a while.  I'm not sure if they still are.

[corco]

I remember the early, pre-3 versions of Windows.  It was all but useless because software wasn't written to take advantage if it then.  I had to order a run-time version because I had purchased the game "Balance of Power," which bizarrely was released for Windows at a time when almost nobody had Windows. 

The day Windows 3.0 came out there was the kind of marketing and news wave that currently accompanies iPhone releases.  I remember being stunned that suddenly everyone was this interested in so clunky and limited a program, but of course, the clunkiness and limitation was changing. 

I was obviously fairly young when 3.1 was still in widespread use, but I remember it being a pretty solid operating system. It was a big upgrade over the DOS machines my parents had me use when I was really little (my Mom would have me enter formulas on Lotus 1-2-3 on DOS as early as like 1991 to learn both math and computers), and it seemed to do its job well without any flash or flare. I remember a friend of mine got Windows 95 in 1995, and it seemed like really, really cool and flashy, but once we got it at our house and started using it, it just seemed like it crashed all the time.

If nothing else, 3.1 brought to light the idea that you NEED a GUI. My parents were using straight up DOS machines until about 1993, when we got an NEC home PC when my Mom went from telecommuting to not working and had to turn in her company laptop. I think my Dad may have had just DOS on his company laptop even after that- he didn't have Windows 95 until 1997 on his company laptop.

Windows 3.1 also caused my Mom, a computer science major in 1980, to go from being a computer expert to really not knowing much about computers. She was a DOS wizard, but never really caught on to the GUI.

[Roadrunner75]

Before I had Windows and even DOS, I had GEOS on my Commodore 64 (with mouse), which looked somewhat like Windows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system)

The fun part was clicking on just about any icon and then being asked to insert another GEOS floppy disk so you can load that particular application.  Kind of disrupts the flow a little bit...

[vdeane]

I grew up on Windows 3.1 (technically WfW 3.11).  It sure was quite a change to have to learn the start menu when Dad upgraded to Windows 98 SE!

The history of Windows is weird.  It was originally a GUI for DOS.  This continued through Windows 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, and Windows for Workgroups 3.11.  Microsoft had created a standalone OS called OS/2 in collaboration with IBM, but when this relationship went sour, they revamped the product into Windows NT 3.5.  This line continued with NT 4.0 and NT 5.0 (more commonly known as Windows 2000).  The old DOS-based line continued with 95, 98, 98 SE, and then finally died with ME.  The NT line was then rebranded and continued with XP, XP SP2, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, 7, 8, Server 2012, 8.1, and 10.  Technically the product called "Windows" died long ago, but the name lives on.

Windows NT was not a revamping of OS/2, it was a rewrite of Digital Equipment Corporation's VMS, which was the OS for the VAX supermini.  DEC's Cutler and most of his group left DEC for Microsoft, both DEC and Microsoft got to use the Windows NT code, although DEC wasn't able to market it for their hardware very successfully.

IBM stopped developing and marketing OS/2, but continued supporting it for existing customers for quite a while.  I'm not sure if they still are.

Wikipedia disagrees

[kkt]

I grew up on Windows 3.1 (technically WfW 3.11).  It sure was quite a change to have to learn the start menu when Dad upgraded to Windows 98 SE!

The history of Windows is weird.  It was originally a GUI for DOS.  This continued through Windows 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, and Windows for Workgroups 3.11.  Microsoft had created a standalone OS called OS/2 in collaboration with IBM, but when this relationship went sour, they revamped the product into Windows NT 3.5.  This line continued with NT 4.0 and NT 5.0 (more commonly known as Windows 2000).  The old DOS-based line continued with 95, 98, 98 SE, and then finally died with ME.  The NT line was then rebranded and continued with XP, XP SP2, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, 7, 8, Server 2012, 8.1, and 10.  Technically the product called "Windows" died long ago, but the name lives on.

Windows NT was not a revamping of OS/2, it was a rewrite of Digital Equipment Corporation's VMS, which was the OS for the VAX supermini.  DEC's Cutler and most of his group left DEC for Microsoft, both DEC and Microsoft got to use the Windows NT code, although DEC wasn't able to market it for their hardware very successfully.

IBM stopped developing and marketing OS/2, but continued supporting it for existing customers for quite a while.  I'm not sure if they still are.

Wikipedia disagrees

For heaven's sake.  From the Wikipedia article you link to:

Microsoft hired a group of developers from Digital Equipment Corporation led by Dave Cutler to build Windows NT, and many elements of the design reflect earlier DEC experience with Cutler's VMS[19] and RSX-11. The operating system was designed to run on multiple instruction set architectures and multiple hardware platforms within each architecture.

And see all of http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-rest-story, especially:

(In 1975,)

Cutler was part of the initial VAX development team. Digital had charged Cutler, along with Dick Hustvedt and Peter Lipman, with designing VAX's OS, VMS.

In 1981, Cutler threatened to leave Digital. To retain its star developer, Digital gave Cutler about 200 hardware and software engineers. Cutler moved his group to Seattle and started a development center.

In August 1988, Bill Gates hired Cutler. One of Cutler's conditions for moving to Microsoft was that he could bring around 20 former Digital employees with him

Microsoft's internal project name for the new OS was OS/2 NT, because Microsoft's intention was for the new OS to succeed OS/2 yet retain the OS/2 API as its primary interface. The success of Windows 3.0 in April 1990 altered Microsoft's thinking and its relationship with IBM. Six weeks after Microsoft released Windows 3.0, Microsoft renamed OS/2 NT as Windows NT, and designated the Win32 API (a 32-bit evolution of Windows 3.0's 16-bit API) NT's official API. Gates decided that compatibility with the 16-bit Windows API and the ability to run Windows 3.x applications unmodified were NT's paramount goals, in addition to support for portions of the DOS, OS/2, and POSIX APIs.

Most of NT's core designers had worked on and with VMS at Digital; some had worked directly with Cutler. How could these developers prevent their VMS design decisions from affecting their design and implementation of NT? Many users believe that NT's developers carried concepts from VMS to NT, but most don't know just how similar NT and VMS are at the kernel level

In developing NT, these designers rewrote VMS in C, cleaning up, tuning, tweaking, and adding some new functionality and capabilities as they went. This statement is in danger of trivializing their efforts; after all, the designers built a new API (i.e., Win32), a new file system (i.e., NTFS), and a new graphical interface subsystem and administrative environment while maintaining backward compatibility with DOS, OS/2, POSIX, and Win16. Nevertheless, the migration of VMS internals to NT was so thorough that within a few weeks of NT's release, Digital engineers noticed the striking similarities.

"Why the Fastest Chip Didn't Win" (Business Week, April 28, 1997) states that when Digital engineers noticed the similarities between VMS and NT, they brought their observations to senior management. Rather than suing, Digital cut a deal with Microsoft. In the summer of 1995, Digital announced Affinity for OpenVMS, a program that required Microsoft to help train Digital NT technicians, help promote NT and Open-VMS as two pieces of a three-tiered client/server networking solution, and promise to maintain NT support for the Alpha processor. Microsoft also paid Digital between 65 million and 100 million dollars.

The Evolution of NT and VMS
Although Microsoft presents NT as a homegrown OS, NT is actually much older than its official 1993 birthdate. NT contains architectural and design influences from another company's flagship OS. Interestingly, throughout the 1990s, Digital introduced many NT features to VMS, and Microsoft has added VMS developments to NT. For example, VMS featured native clustering support in 1984, and 64-bit memory and system APIs in 1996. Microsoft did not introduce clustering support to NT until late last year­and only on a limited scale­and several years might pass before Microsoft releases 64-bit NT. Reciprocally, Microsoft released NT's first version with support for kernel-mode threads, system-wide event logging, and a configuration database called the Registry. VMS introduced kernal-mode threads in VMS 7.0 in 1995, and VMS 7.2 will include NT-style event logging and a Registry.

[Pete from Boston]

The fun part was clicking on just about any icon and then being asked to insert another GEOS floppy disk so you can load that particular application.  Kind of disrupts the flow a little bit...

This describes a lot of the Commodore 64 experience with any application more than a little complex.  Pre-HD PC experience, too. 

[vdeane]

I grew up on Windows 3.1 (technically WfW 3.11).  It sure was quite a change to have to learn the start menu when Dad upgraded to Windows 98 SE!

The history of Windows is weird.  It was originally a GUI for DOS.  This continued through Windows 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, and Windows for Workgroups 3.11.  Microsoft had created a standalone OS called OS/2 in collaboration with IBM, but when this relationship went sour, they revamped the product into Windows NT 3.5.  This line continued with NT 4.0 and NT 5.0 (more commonly known as Windows 2000).  The old DOS-based line continued with 95, 98, 98 SE, and then finally died with ME.  The NT line was then rebranded and continued with XP, XP SP2, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, 7, 8, Server 2012, 8.1, and 10.  Technically the product called "Windows" died long ago, but the name lives on.

Windows NT was not a revamping of OS/2, it was a rewrite of Digital Equipment Corporation's VMS, which was the OS for the VAX supermini.  DEC's Cutler and most of his group left DEC for Microsoft, both DEC and Microsoft got to use the Windows NT code, although DEC wasn't able to market it for their hardware very successfully.

IBM stopped developing and marketing OS/2, but continued supporting it for existing customers for quite a while.  I'm not sure if they still are.

Wikipedia disagrees

For heaven's sake.  From the Wikipedia article you link to:

Microsoft hired a group of developers from Digital Equipment Corporation led by Dave Cutler to build Windows NT, and many elements of the design reflect earlier DEC experience with Cutler's VMS[19] and RSX-11. The operating system was designed to run on multiple instruction set architectures and multiple hardware platforms within each architecture.

And see all of http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-rest-story, especially:

(In 1975,)

Cutler was part of the initial VAX development team. Digital had charged Cutler, along with Dick Hustvedt and Peter Lipman, with designing VAX's OS, VMS.

In 1981, Cutler threatened to leave Digital. To retain its star developer, Digital gave Cutler about 200 hardware and software engineers. Cutler moved his group to Seattle and started a development center.

In August 1988, Bill Gates hired Cutler. One of Cutler's conditions for moving to Microsoft was that he could bring around 20 former Digital employees with him

Microsoft's internal project name for the new OS was OS/2 NT, because Microsoft's intention was for the new OS to succeed OS/2 yet retain the OS/2 API as its primary interface. The success of Windows 3.0 in April 1990 altered Microsoft's thinking and its relationship with IBM. Six weeks after Microsoft released Windows 3.0, Microsoft renamed OS/2 NT as Windows NT, and designated the Win32 API (a 32-bit evolution of Windows 3.0's 16-bit API) NT's official API. Gates decided that compatibility with the 16-bit Windows API and the ability to run Windows 3.x applications unmodified were NT's paramount goals, in addition to support for portions of the DOS, OS/2, and POSIX APIs.

Most of NT's core designers had worked on and with VMS at Digital; some had worked directly with Cutler. How could these developers prevent their VMS design decisions from affecting their design and implementation of NT? Many users believe that NT's developers carried concepts from VMS to NT, but most don't know just how similar NT and VMS are at the kernel level

In developing NT, these designers rewrote VMS in C, cleaning up, tuning, tweaking, and adding some new functionality and capabilities as they went. This statement is in danger of trivializing their efforts; after all, the designers built a new API (i.e., Win32), a new file system (i.e., NTFS), and a new graphical interface subsystem and administrative environment while maintaining backward compatibility with DOS, OS/2, POSIX, and Win16. Nevertheless, the migration of VMS internals to NT was so thorough that within a few weeks of NT's release, Digital engineers noticed the striking similarities.

"Why the Fastest Chip Didn't Win" (Business Week, April 28, 1997) states that when Digital engineers noticed the similarities between VMS and NT, they brought their observations to senior management. Rather than suing, Digital cut a deal with Microsoft. In the summer of 1995, Digital announced Affinity for OpenVMS, a program that required Microsoft to help train Digital NT technicians, help promote NT and Open-VMS as two pieces of a three-tiered client/server networking solution, and promise to maintain NT support for the Alpha processor. Microsoft also paid Digital between 65 million and 100 million dollars.

The Evolution of NT and VMS
Although Microsoft presents NT as a homegrown OS, NT is actually much older than its official 1993 birthdate. NT contains architectural and design influences from another company's flagship OS. Interestingly, throughout the 1990s, Digital introduced many NT features to VMS, and Microsoft has added VMS developments to NT. For example, VMS featured native clustering support in 1984, and 64-bit memory and system APIs in 1996. Microsoft did not introduce clustering support to NT until late last year­and only on a limited scale­and several years might pass before Microsoft releases 64-bit NT. Reciprocally, Microsoft released NT's first version with support for kernel-mode threads, system-wide event logging, and a configuration database called the Registry. VMS introduced kernal-mode threads in VMS 7.0 in 1995, and VMS 7.2 will include NT-style event logging and a Registry.

You missed the key sentence of that Wikipedia article:

When development started in November 1989, Windows NT was to be known as OS/2 3.0,[17] the third version of the operating system developed jointly by Microsoft and IBM.

The later bringing on of people from VMS does explain why the first version of NT was 3.5, but the version number betrays its origins in the OS/2 product line.  Reading the stuff you posted, it doesn't look like any similarity with VMS was intended by Microsoft; rather, it was a shortcut the hired developers took rather than re-invent the wheel.

[NJRoadfan]

The first version of Windows NT was 3.1, mostly to keep it in sync with Windows 3.1. Despite the claims it was a rewrite of VMS, NT could run 16-bit text based OS/2 programs and read its HPFS file system all the way up to NT 4.0. NT itself wasn't even designed to run on x86 CPUs, its target was RISC platforms originally. The port came later when Microsoft realized x86 wasn't going anywhere.

[Molandfreak]

inb4 apple sues.