Microsoft Windows
An operating system from Microsoft Corporation that controls PC compatibles, mobile phones, tablets and increasingly embedded computers. It is by far the most common operating system being used in the world and dominates the desktop and laptop markets with over 96% share of the market and is also the biggest player in server operating systems by number of systems installed, although in that sector their market share is nowhere near the number that they enjoy in the PC sector. Also the second most shipped operating system on tablets and the third most popular mobile phone OS in the world leaving the embedded market as the only platform where they are not a major player, but even there there are specific market segments like POS systems and ATM's (hole in the wall machines) where the Windows OS has a clear market lead or even near monopoly.
History
Originally announced in 1983 as to be available later that year under the name Interface Manager, it was a panicky response by Microsoft co-founder William Gates to a private conversation he had with Digital Research owner Gary Kildall about the plans that DR had of introducing a graphical shell for DOS and CP/M under the name of GEM. The first edition however did not hit the market until 1985 and then under the name of Microsoft Windows and was one of the projects that caused the creation of the term vapourware. The original release of Windows was a marketing disaster that caused the company a lot of grief, it was kept alive in the OEM sector by European companies ACT Computers and Tulip but had almost no sales in the retail channel.
Porting issues
As MS Windows and OS/2 have similar origins there is still a bit of compatibility between the systems, naming conventions, folder structures and handling of codepages for instance are either similar or identical. And while the systems have diverged greatly in the last few years, some developments have been in parallel, such as both systems having base support for 16 bit Unicode unlike the 8 bit Unicode offered by most Unix like systems.
The main problem remains that much of the current base of programming tools comes for OS/2 from the UNIX world with only Open Watcom being a current major cross-platform tool that offers Windows and OS/2 compatibility.
See also: Migrating Windows Applications to OS/2: Making it Work (old, but useful tips)
Known versions
This lists major versions of Windows, minor versions or minor bug fix releases are not listed unless they have some specific significance. Note that Windows XP and later in addition to Windows Server 2003 are delivered in both 32 and 64 bit versions, Windows server 2008 R2 and later plus Windows Home Server 2011 are only delivered in 64 bit versions while consumer MS Windows version 8 and later are usually delivered in a dual 32 and 64 bit media configuration and thus not listed separately.
- Original code base
- MS Windows 1.0
- MS Windows 2.0
- MS Windows 2.1/286
- MS Windows 2.1/386
- MS Windows 3.0
- MS Windows 3.1
- MS Windows 3.11 (Windows for Workgroups)
- Hybrid 16/32 bit versions
- MS Windows 3.1/3.11 with Win32s
- MS Windows 95
- MS Windows 95 OEM (FSR2/3/4)
- MS Windows 98
- MS Windows 98SE
- MS Windows ME
- Windows NT
- MS Windows NT 3.0
- MS Windows NT 3.5
- MS Windows NT 4
- MS Windows 2000
- MS Windows XP
- MS Windows XP Professional 64
- MS Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
- MS Windows XP Media Center Edition
- MS Windows XP Embedded Edition (aka XP POS)
- MS Windows Vista
- MS Windows Vista 64
- MS Windows 7
- MS Windows 7 64
- MS Windows 8
- MS Windows 8.1
- MS Windows 10
- Server versions
- MS Windows NT Server 3.1
- MS Windows NT Server 3.5
- MS Windows NT Server 4
- MS Windows 2000 Server
- MS Windows 2003 Server
- MS Windows 2003 Server R2
- MS Windows 2008 Server
- MS Windows 2008 Server R2
- MS Windows 2012 Server
- MS Windows 2012 Server R2
- MS Windows 2016 Server
- Windows Home Server
- Windows Home Server 2011
Starter editions
Microsoft has from time to time come out with "lower cost versions" of its OEM OS software intended to be sold with very low cost hardware such as Netbooks. In the case of an un-named XP variant it was crippled with both software and license restrictions, you could only sell it with hardware that had 1Gb of memory or less, with the "Starter editions" of Windows Vista and 7 you could only run three applications concurrently. More recent cut down versions of Windows 8.x and 10 are free, have fewer tools than the full versions and display adverts, but otherwise appear un-crippled.
Links & publications
- Windows XP Buyrukları Elkitabı - Published as HTML pages via Archive.org - 2005 - ISBN 975-96618-6-1
- Short introduction to Windows XP programming in Turkish