Windows 3.x
More info
- Creator
- Microsoft
- Released
- Type
- Graphical environment on top of MS-DOS
- License
- Proprietary
- Successor
- Windows 95
Versions 3.0 from 1990 and 3.1 from 1992 turned Windows into the desktop environment the PC world actually used, after five years of polite indifference.
Windows 3.0 shipped in May 1990 with Program Manager and File Manager in place of the MS-DOS Executive file list, sixteen colours on VGA and icons drawn by Susan Kare, who had done the Macintosh's. Underneath were three modes: real mode for old machines, standard mode for the 286's protected mode, and 386 enhanced mode, where DOS programs ran side by side in their own virtual 8086 windows with virtual memory. It sold ten million copies in two years, more than every earlier version combined, and prompted Microsoft to walk away from the OS/2 partnership with IBM.
Windows 3.1 in April 1992 dropped real mode and added TrueType fonts, OLE, drag and drop and Minesweeper, and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 the following year built the networking in. All of it still ran on top of MS-DOS with cooperative multitasking: one program that refused to yield the CPU froze the whole desktop. Windows 95 replaced the shell in 1995, but 3.x lived on in cash registers and embedded systems, and Microsoft was still selling licences for it as late as 2008.