39 Facts About Microsoft Windows

However, Microsoft Windows is not the most used operating system when including both mobile and desktop OSes, due to Android's massive growth.

Microsoft, the developer of Windows, has registered several trademarks, each of which denotes a family of Windows operating systems that target a specific sector of the computing industry.

Early versions of Microsoft Windows are often thought of as graphical shells, mostly because they ran on top of MS-DOS and use it for file system services.

Unlike MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows allowed users to execute multiple graphical applications at the same time, through cooperative multitasking.

Microsoft Windows implemented an elaborate, segment-based, software virtual memory scheme, which allows it to run applications larger than available memory: code segments and resources are swapped in and thrown away when memory became scarce; data segments moved in memory when a given application had relinquished processor control.

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Microsoft Windows 95 introduced a redesigned, object oriented user interface, replacing the previous Program Manager with the Start menu, taskbar, and Microsoft Windows Explorer shell.

The first OSR of Windows 95 was the first version of Windows to be bundled with Microsoft's web browser, Internet Explorer.

Mainstream support for Microsoft Windows 95 ended on December 31,2000, and extended support for Microsoft Windows 95 ended on December 31,2001.

Microsoft Windows 98 included integration with Internet Explorer 4 through Active Desktop and other aspects of the Microsoft Windows Desktop Update.

In May 1999, Microsoft released Windows 98 Second Edition, an updated version of Windows 98.

Mainstream support for Microsoft Windows 98 ended on June 30,2002, and extended support for Microsoft Windows 98 ended on July 11,2006.

On September 14,2000, Microsoft released Windows Me, the last DOS-based version of Windows.

However, Microsoft Windows Me was faced with criticism for its speed and instability, along with hardware compatibility issues and its removal of real mode DOS support.

PC World considered Windows Me to be one of the worst operating systems Microsoft had ever released, and the fourth worst tech product of all time.

Microsoft Windows NT was the first Microsoft Windows operating system based on a hybrid kernel.

The introduction of Windows XP aimed to unify the consumer-oriented Windows 9x series with the architecture introduced by Windows NT, a change which Microsoft promised would provide better performance over its DOS-based predecessors.

At retail, Microsoft Windows XP was now marketed in two main editions: the "Home" edition was targeted towards consumers, while the "Professional" edition was targeted towards business environments and power users, and included additional security and networking features.

Microsoft Windows 7 has multi-touch support, a redesigned Microsoft Windows shell with an updated taskbar with revealable jump lists that contain shortcuts to files frequently used with specific applications and shortcuts to tasks within the application, a home networking system called HomeGroup, and performance improvements.

The new Microsoft Windows version required a minimum resolution of 1024×768 pixels, effectively making it unfit for netbooks with 800×600-pixel screens.

On September 30,2014, Microsoft announced Windows 10 as the successor to Windows 8.

In February 2017, Microsoft announced the migration of its Windows source code repository from Perforce to Git.

In June 2021, shortly before Microsoft's announcement of Windows 11, Microsoft updated their lifecycle policy pages for Windows 10, revealing that support for their last release of Windows 10 will be October 14,2025.

On June 24,2021, Microsoft Windows 11 was announced as the successor to Microsoft Windows 10 during a livestream.

In July 2021, Microsoft announced it will start selling subscriptions to virtualized Windows desktops as part of a new Windows 365 service in the following month.

Microsoft Windows NT included support for several platforms before the x86-based personal computer became dominant in the professional world.

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Microsoft Windows 2000 dropped support for all platforms, except the third generation x86 or newer in 32-bit mode.

Microsoft Windows Vista was the first client version of Microsoft Windows NT to be released simultaneously in IA-32 and x64 editions.

Microsoft Windows 11 is the first version to drop support for 32-bit hardware.

Microsoft Windows CE, is an edition of Microsoft Windows that runs on minimalistic computers, like satellite navigation systems and some mobile phones.

Microsoft Windows Embedded Compact is based on its own dedicated kernel, dubbed Microsoft Windows CE kernel.

Microsoft Windows CE was used in the Dreamcast along with Sega's own proprietary OS for the console.

Up to and including every version before Windows 2000, Microsoft used an in-house version control system named Source Library Manager.

The Microsoft Windows code was divided among 65 different repositories with a kind of virtualization layer to produce unified view of all of the code.

In 2017 Microsoft Windows announced that it would start using Git, an open source version control system created by Linus Torvalds and in May 2017 they reported that has completed migration into the Git repository.

Microsoft Windows has been working on a new project called the Virtual File System for Git to address these challenges.

Early versions of Microsoft Windows were designed at a time where malware and networking were less common, and had few built-in security features; they did not provide access privileges to allow a user to prevent other users from accessing their files, and they did not provide memory protection to prevent one process from reading or writing another process's address space or to prevent a process from code or data used by privileged-mode code.

Microsoft Windows NT was far more secure, implementing access privileges and full memory protection, and, while 32-bit programs meeting the DoD's C2 security rating, yet these advantages were nullified by the fact that, prior to Microsoft Windows Vista, the default user account created during the setup process was an administrator account; the user, and any program the user launched, had full access to the machine.

Microsoft Windows Vista introduced a privilege elevation system called User Account Control.

User applications, including the Microsoft Windows shell, are then started with the restricted token, resulting in a reduced privilege environment even under an Administrator account.