Microsoft Windows
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Microsoft Windows is a family of operating systems created by the Microsoft Corporation. Windows was first developed for the IBM PC and compatible architectures and was the first graphical user interface on that architecture. It is still the predominant operating system on desktop PC platforms.
Versions 1.0 to 3.1 were basically graphical window managers on top of MS-DOS. Windows NT was the first version of Windows to qualify as a complete operating system, while Windows 95 was the first one that was widely distributed to users. The Windows 95-ME still had MS-DOS as the underlying platform, but no longer needed prior installation of MS-DOS to function.
For many years Microsoft Windows provided application developers with 16- and 32-bit APIs in the form of DLLs (Dynamic Link Libraries). Native applications could be written in C++ and Visual Basic and compiled into executables which used the DLLs distributed with the operating system. Today Microsoft provides the .NET framework for application development which underneath utilizes the older APIs to interact directly with Windows.
Versions [edit]
Versions with significant use today in reverse chronological order:
- Microsoft Windows Vista (published 2006)
- Microsoft Windows XP
- Microsoft Windows 2000
- Microsoft Windows ME
- Microsoft Windows 98
- Microsoft Windows 95
- Microsoft Windows NT 4.0
Older versions include:
- Microsoft Windows 3.11 for Workgroups
- Microsoft Windows 3.1
- Microsoft Windows 3.0
- Microsoft Windows 2.0
- Microsoft Windows 1.0
