Slashdot Mirror
Windows 7 To Be Called ... Windows 7
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's Mike Nash came forward today in a blog post on the Windows Vista Blog and revealed the official name for Windows Code Name '7' as simply 'Windows 7.' The reasoning, by Mr. Nash, is that Windows 7 is 'the seventh release of Windows.' As much wonderful sense as this makes on first glance, it seems as if Microsoft's marketing teams pulled this number out of thin air: the Windows 7 kernel is version 6.1, and there's no way Windows 7 adds up as the seventh release of Windows anyway."
1.) November 1985 Windows 1.01
2.) November 1987 Windows 2.03
2.) March 1989 Windows 2.11
3.) May 1990 Windows 3.0
3.) March 1992 Windows 3.1x
3.) October 1992 Windows For Workgroups 3.1
4.) July 1993 Windows NT 3.1 NT 3.1
3.) December 1993 Windows For Workgroups 3.11
3.) January 1994 Windows 3.2 (released in Simplified Chinese only)
4.) September 1994 Windows NT 3.5
4.) May 1995 Windows NT 3.51
5.) August 1995 Windows 95
6.) July 1996 Windows NT 4.0
7.) June 1998 Windows 98
8.) May 1999 Windows 98 SE
9.) February 2000 Windows 2000
10.) September 2000 Windows Me
11.) October 2001 Windows XP
11.) March 2003 Windows XP 64-bit Edition
12.) April 2003 Windows Server 2003
11.) April 2005 Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
13.) July 2006 Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs
14.) January 2007 (retail) Windows Vista
15.) July 2007 Windows Home Server
16.) February 2008 Windows Server 2008
17.) 2010 (planned) Windows 7
They're using their grammar skills there.
Per the wiki, Win 95, 98, and ME are all revisions of version 4, which makes xp 5, vista 6, and 7 7.
There were two versions of Windows before Windows 3, that's why they called it Windows 3. And Windows 3 wasn't an OS, it was a shell that ran on top of DOS. Some people say that Windows 3 was an OS because it had drivers for certain pieces of hardware. I disagree, unless you are willing to call all the contemporary games with Soundblaster drivers "operating systems" too. The first consumer OS Microsoft produced was Windows 95. It still used DOS as a makeshift bootloader, but that's about it.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I think your math is a bit wrong.
The older "consumer" versions of Windows went something like:
1 - Windows 1.0
2 - Windows 2.0
3 - Windows 3.0, 3.1, 3.11
4 - Windows 95, 98, ME
The NT series went something like:
3 - Windows NT 3.1, 3.5
4 - Windows NT 4.0
5 - Windows 2000 (5.0), Windows XP (5.1), Windows Server 2003 (5.2)
6 - Windows Vista (6.0)
Up to that point, it all makes sense. Except for the consumer / NT split, each version of Windows with the same basic version number is similar to the others. Windows ME was not much different than Windows 95, and the NT 5 series were pretty much cross-compatible.
Since Windows 7 is basically an enhanced version of Vista, pretty much as XP was to 2000, calling it Windows 7 doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Especially considering that the internal version number is 6.2.
In Cantonese, 7 is pronounced as qi(æY') /foolish looking stuff.
Which describe a stupid
For example...
That guy is very "7"
(That guy is acting like a fool)
and...
Windows is very "7". It show up blue screen again.
(Windows is stupid that always halt)
Yeah, but that's insider stuff for geeks. As far as Microsoft's branding was concerned, they were three separate OSes. Importantly, if I'm remembering right Windows 98 wasn't a free upgrade from Windows 95, for example.
*sigh*
No, Windows 1.x, 2.x and 3.x aren't part of the NT line. TFA and everyone are conflating two completely different operating systems just because they all happen to be named Windows:
1 = Windows NT 3.1
2 = Windows NT 3.5
3 = Windows NT 4.0
4 = Windows 2000
5 = Windows XP
6 = Windows Vista
7 = Windows 7
So, you see it makes perfect sense.
Now someone tell me why I'm defending Microsoft because I have no idea.
My blog
They claim that wasn't a "consumer" OS, but for the pros.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You may be thinking of Windows for Workgroups which was separate from plain Windows 3, premiered at version 3.1, but was significantly upgraded at 3.11. In fact, WfW 3.11 had core features that Windows 3.11 lacked, such as some full protected mode driver stacks, for disk and the network I think.
In any event, the grandparent's recitation of versions is correct, and Windows 7 is the 7th major version of the Windows kernel.
Windows 1.x = 1
Windows 2.x = 2
Windows NT / For Workgroups / 3.x = 3
Windows NT 4 / Win95 / Win98 (SE) / WinME = 4
Windows 2000 / XP / Server 2003 = 5
Windows Vista / Server 2008 = 6
Windows 7 = 7
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows#Timeline_of_releases
(look at the "Current version/build" column)
Actually, XP is 5.1 based on 2k.
The first consumer OS Microsoft produced was Windows 95. It still used DOS as a makeshift bootloader, but that's about it.
Okay, this is probably being a bit picky, but since we're on Slashdot I'll burn some karma. DOS was used for a whole lot more than a boot loader on Windows95. MS wanted the world to think that Win95 was fully 32bit by hiding it's 3.1/DOS design but it certainly was the underlying technology. If you ran a win16 application then the entire system dropped down to cooperative multitasking and your 32bit apps were just along for the klunky ride. Tons of system calls were thunked down to 16bit. Win95 was a commercial success but it was a shameful, ugly hack that still was still DOS at its core and had most of the design "issues" that it's predecessor had. MS set the entire computer industry back by at least half a decade by pawning that trash off on the consumer market.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
No, it was because they were already up to Word 5.1 on the Mac - it created a unified numbering scheme.
Rob
Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Numbers in Chinese culture
It's 8 that's lucky.
8 is lucky, that's why Olympics opened on 08.08.08
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines - Unknown
No, in China 8 is the luckiest number. Partly because the word (ba) sounds like that for "prosperity".
It's actually in western countries that 7 is lucky.
>>>Per the wiki, Win 95, 98, and ME are all revisions of version 4, which makes xp 5, vista 6, and 7 7.
No, no, no. You see the "consumer" 16/32-bit version of Windows is dead. It was never updated after Win98/ME. The current versions we use are actually part of the "professional" 32/64-bit NT line, and the major releases include:
Windows NT 3.1 (which was actually 1.0, but Microsoft called it 3.1 for marketing reasons)*
Windows NT 4.0 (1996)
Windows NT 5.0 (Windows 2000)
Windows NT 5.1 (XP in 2001)
Windows NT 6.0 (Vista in 2006)
Windows NT 7.0 (Windows 7)
* Another reason it may have been called 3.1, was because it was originally supposed to be a joint IBM-Microsoft release of OS/2 3.0 but which later fell apart.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
There were exactly two differences between 3.0 and 3.1:
3.1 had support for 386 protected mode. And one of the two included games were different.
Windows numbering starts from Windows 1.0. Windows NT numbering started at 3.1, because that was the equivalent version of standard Windows available at the time (and it conveniently was higher than OS/2's version at the time). So if you look at the actual Windows (NT) version numbers, it makes more sense:
Windows 1.0
Windows 2.0
Windows 3.x / NT 3.x
Windows 9x/Me (95 = 4.0, 98 = 4.1, Me = 4.9) / NT 4.0
Windows 2000/XP (NT 5.0, NT 5.1)
Windows Vista (NT 6.0)
Windows 7 (NT 7.0)
Remember that 98, Me, and XP were all "minor" versions.
Windows NT 3.x = kernel version 3.x
Windows NT 4 = kernel version 4
Windows 2000 = kernel version 5
Windows XP = kernel version 5.1
Windows Vista = kernel version 6
Windows 7 = kernel version 7
Note: Current betas of Win7 are kernel version 6.1, but I'm guessing that it will change before release.
Dan
2003 runs a different version of the NT kernel than XP, and is therefore intrinsically different. And don't forget NT 3.51, a separate release from 3.5. See here.
I beta tested (officially) most of the Windows releases except for 3.11 and anything after longhorn. Each major release would often be refereed to by a sequence number and a code name. For instance, 95 was Win 4.0 a.k.a "Chicago". The numbering seems confusing because a lot of you are trying to incorporate NT, which for most of Windows life span was an independent product, and because 95 through ME were only incremental revisions to 95, not new projects in the same way Chicago, Whistler, and Longhorn were.
1 = Win 1.0
2 = Win 2.0
3 = Win 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, Some code shared with OS/2
4 = Win 95, Win 95 OS/R 2, Win 98, Win 98 SE, Win ME
5 = Windows XP (Move to the NT kernel.)
6 = Vista
7 = Windows 7
Going back in history, here were the versions and reasons for numbering (I was in the channel back in those days so I still remember a lot of this):
Windows 1.0 - program launcher that competed with things like Desqview.
Windows 2.x - A full "environment" that also shipped as a runtime for programs that required a GUI on DOS. PageMaker was a good example, it came with the Windows runtime. Also available as a version with rudimentary 386 support
Windows 3.0 - This was the first version of Windows most users saw back then. It supported 386 mode fully, and was really the first version to be used as a full-time GUI by most folks. They made a huge retail push back then to get it out there. Windows 3 was the first version to be produced post-IBM split and pretty much killed the OS/2 market in infancy.
Windows 3.1 was an improvement to 3.0. It also was released around the same time as the first NT version, so for marketing reasons NT 1.0 was labeled as NT 3.1, so as to help them differentiate between the "pro" and "consumer" Windows versions.
3.11, Windows for Workgroups, etc. were all branches off this tree.
Windows NT continued to evolve to the 3.5 and 3.51 branches. Meanwhile, Microsoft kept working on a DOS-based version of Windows that was initially called "Chicago" in-house and was versioned as Windows 4.0. That became Windows 95 when it shipped. Windows 95 was the basis for Windows 95 OSR2 (added initial USB support and some other stuff), Windows 98, and finally Windows ME. Thus endeth the DOS-based line of Windows.
Meanwhile, Windows NT was revved up to 4.0, gaining the Windows 95 GUI and moving video and printing into the kernel. This bought big performance improvements but at the cost of introducing us to the modern BSOD (most fatal errors back then seemed to trace down to the video drivers). NT 4 became the basis for NT 5.0, which became known to us as Windows 2000.
Windows 200 introduced USB support to Windows, along with some of the usability improvements that were in consumer Windows at the time and also brought us Active Directory - their attempt to dethrone Novell as directory services king.
It worked.
Windows 2000 still really wasn't a "consumer-worthy" OS, so for NT 5.1 they focused on the user experience. They prettied up the UI, added features like System Restore, and split the desktop OS into Home and Professional versions. It became Windows XP.
Meanwhile on the server side, Microsoft was taking that same kernel and rebuilding it into a successor to Windows 2000 Server. It, in turn, became Windows 2003 Server (version 5.2).
The next project was to produce a successor OS. The codebase got revved up to what became Windows 6.0, and it wound up coming out as Windows Vista and, after a year's more development the server version became Windows Server 2008. Both are based on the 6.0 codebase.
So now comes Windows 7.0 - the server version will be AKA Windows Server 2008 R2 and will break into a 64-bit version only.
So the numbering overlapped for a while, but if you look at the original Windows history and then pick up NT from there it mostly makes sense. There have been some branches and dead ends (All the 16-bit Windows versions after 95, CE, XP Embedded), but the main line goes 16-bit to 95, then picks up 32-bit with NT and goes 32-bit and up only with 2000 (5.0) and beyond.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Here in the west at least most of the customers actually pay.
Nah, we go to MS Tech Launch events and get Vista for free.
Here is what Microsoft says for its Desktop OS history.. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/WinHistoryDesktop.mspx
And postin' "Me Too!" like some brain-dead AOL-er - Weird Al Yankovic
This is bullshit. There is no emulator. It just didn't allow the bootloader to boot to command.com. Please cite a source for this.
XP replaced DOS with an emulator(and no, cmd.exe is a shell, not an emulator).
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Andy
GetVersionEx() returns the Major OS version in numeric form. Currently, the values are as follows:
4 - The operating system is Windows NT 4.0, Windows Me, Windows 98, or Windows 95.
5 - The operating system is Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, or Windows 2000.
6 - The operating system is Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008.
Thus, Windows 7 will probably return a GetVersionEx() Major Version number of.... 7.
Nearly half of all people are below average