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Microsoft Windows 3.0 Is 20 Years Today

Posted by timothy on from the great-platform-for-playing-jeopardy dept.

siliconbits writes "Some say that the Windows 3.0 GUI (remember, it needed MS-DOS or DR-DOS to work) was the single most important version, as it allowed Microsoft to get its day. The first truly successful Windows operating system is 20 years old today; Windows 3.0 was launched on 22 May 1990 and was the successor to Windows 2.1x."

3 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Win 3.1 emulator by FuckingNickName · · Score: 0, Troll

    It's more a demonstration that HTML/Javascript-based application delivery is still more messy than that of a 20 year old native GUI.

  2. Re:"First truly successful windows" by gavron · · Score: 0, Troll

    Yeah where's that windows 3.0? *LOL!* You windows fanbois are hilarious :) E

  3. I guess it sucked to be you by dreamchaser · · Score: 1, Troll

    You're whining because you didn't have enough RAM? On a 386 with plenty of RAM Win 3.0 did a pretty good job for it's time. I preferred OS/2 in those days but I used Windows (often WinOS2, sometimes via dual boot) plenty as well and it was good for what it was. Then again I had 4 Meg of RAM, not the 640k you're whining about.

    As for the overhead in DOS, it was very easy to boot all sorts of DOS configurations with memory managers to free up a LOT of space. Towards the end of the DOS era many games almost required you to do so in order to run as they hit the brick wall.

    It wasn't an Operating System as the article intro states though. It was a shell that sat on top of DOS and allowed cooperative multitasking and (on 386+CPU's) the use of Virtual 8086 mode to even multitask many DOS programs.