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Perhaps aesthetic - both Windows 1.0 and 2.0 were (to me at least) very ugly. Things got a bit better with Windows 3.0 and 3.1 (and easier to program) but it wasn't really until Windows 95 that the whole thing came together. One thing you have to give Microsoft (at least back then) is that they did keep trying. And, speaking as a Windows developer, their documentation was very good.
By monkeydreams 2026-03-057:431 reply > Perhaps aesthetic - both Windows 1.0 and 2.0 were (to me at least) very ugly.
But it was amazing for those of us used to black and white/green/amber screens in DOS. You could put an image as your background. And it stayed there, lurking behind your word processor or spreadsheet, to spring back into your vision whenever you finished up your work.
I never understood that pull.
One of the very first things I always do in any OS is to set the desktop background to solid color, usually black. I almost never ever will see it, coz there's always going to be a window on top of it, except upon startup for some brief period of time or if I accidentally minimize everything.
I work with full screen windows. Always (tiny number of exceptional cases maybe). I switch between windows with Alt+Tab when necessary. I also have a relatively small screen, both for work and personal stuff (14" for at least 10 years now).
You do you of course.
By high_priest 2026-03-0817:31 For me, its a distraction from the corporate world. A token of my outies existence in the innie world.
> it wasn't really until Windows 95 that the whole thing came together.
I remember the launch parties for 95. I remember thinking to myself how strange it was to go to all of that expense to promote an OS.
they weren't promoting an OS, they were promoting a user experience - A GUI that competed with the Mac.
There were OS improvements too, but I have forgot what. The real improvements came with Win2K - one of the best versions of Windows ever.
Win2K was my favorite as well. The transparency was tasteful. Everything worked and for the most part didn’t crash. Many (most?) games worked. It ran great on a PIII 600mhz. Everything good about NT4 was better and most of the consumer friendly stuff starting to take shape. The disc was even gorgeous. Peak MS design and engineering.
By hypercube33 2026-03-0512:46 I love me some Windows 2000 but when I got to XP I was running it with a BeOS theme. My peak of windows ux may be around Windows 10 Beta 1 - combined 7/8/10 transparent and start menu and was super fast. That said beta 1 of Win11 was also super fast so that makes me wonder what they broke under the hood.
By SoftTalker 2026-03-053:25 Yep, favorite version of Windows ever. Even with Windows 7 and XP I switched the settings back so it looked like Win2K.
By porl 2026-03-057:25 Win2k was the last one I was excited about.
By xattt 2026-03-0513:49 > There were OS improvements too, but I have forgot what …
Hold up, there is no need for this revisionist history.
At the very least, Windows 95 introduced the ability to run 32-bit apps pre-emptively that was otherwise only available on Windows NT. You continued to maintain the ability to run 16-but apps that wouldn’t run on Win NT.
You also gained support for long filenames, and to the chagrin of many, plug-and-play.
These were foundational and set the tone for the next 30 years of computing.
I don't remember if Plug-n-Play shipped with the original Windows 95 (it's certainly there in the final OSR), but that was a pretty big shift from the manual IRQ and port mapping days of DOS/Windows 3.1.
It did. That was one of its big features.
It also was the first version to remove the 8.3 limitation and give us long file names.
By conception 2026-03-054:532 reply They were fake long file names though. At the actual dos layer they were 8.3. And the plug and play was terrrrible. I always turned it off. Ugh the plug and play modems/soundcards were trash.
By tharkun__ 2026-03-061:59 Plug and Pray!
They weren't fake long file names. They were actual long files names but of course the operating system that didn't support long files names didn't know what to do with the (very real) long file names. It only knew the 8.3 file name that was also set for compatibility.
Of course it sucked if you looked at or worked with DOS based apps. But it was one of those things that was always good about Microsoft Windows: Backwards compatibility.
They literally would build in (bug-) compatibility layers for specific games, where if they detected you were running a particular game, they'd not use the fixed or optimized code paths, but the old ones / emulate / patch things as the game expected them to be. And that was not because Windows was buggy and the games were good. It was the other way around. Games used trickery and internal knowledge that they shouldn't and if/when MS would block those paths or change internals, those games would stop working or crash.
You're not wrong, but PnP including the configuration basis for PCI which still sits at the config space layer of the latest and greatest PCIe. That's the piece I find so significant. I work with GPUs that mostly communicate over a proprietary C2C connection, but how does the OS find them? PCI enumeration.
By hypercube33 2026-03-0512:471 reply IRQ conflict stuff still kinda haunts me.
By hyperman1 2026-03-0513:23 I remember. You get a tiny little sliver of sound and then press reset.
By dylan604 2026-03-051:35 back then, it was still plug-n-pray. it didn't work as well as it was intended when it was first available
By rekabis 2026-03-0621:50 > A GUI that competed with the Mac.
Oh, that is _hilarious._ Mac started out strong and has always kept ahead of Windows in many if not most ways that GIUs are done.
Hell, every now and then I’ll fire up my 2002 Power Mac (dual 1.25Ghz G4, MDD) and just bask in the beauty that is OS 9.2.2. While it was lacking good multitasking and multi-user accounts, it is still an exquisitely gorgeous UI.
I still use it for various tasks, although it’s close to impossible to do decent Internet work on it, owing to no available modern web browsers.
By SoftTalker 2026-03-053:231 reply IIRC we got long filenames with Win95, and a built-in network stack, no more Trumpet WinSock. And it did seem more stable, not nearly as good as NT/2000 but better than 3.1.
By lproven 2026-03-0612:28 > IIRC we got long filenames with Win95, and a built-in network stack, no more Trumpet WinSock. And it did seem more stable, not nearly as good as NT/2000 but better than 3.1.
Kinda sorta but this misses context.
> we got long filenames
Consumers got long filenames. NT had been doing it for a couple of years. Win95 did it on FAT on a mass-market OS.
> a built-in network stack
No. Windows for Workgroups had offered that for several years. It talked NetBEUI, the Microsoft protocol, out of the box, and it also talked Novell IPX/SPX for talking to Netware, and DECnet, and HP-DLC...
But you hint at the important bit...
> no more Trumpet WinSock
Bingo. Win95 offered native 32-bit TCP/IP for the first time and it was over Ethernet.
WfWg had DOS-based 16-bit TCP/IP but only over Ethernet (or Token Ring!) It didn't have dialup networking -- at all. It couldn't talk TCP/IP over PPP, such as over a modem. WfWg 3.11 offered, only as an optional extra download, a 32-bit TCP/IP stack -- for network cards. And nobody had anything to download it over. ;-)
Internet Explorer 4 for Windows 3.x had an optional 16-bit dialup stack and optional 16-bit TCP/IP -- but that could not talk to a network card.
I know, it's prehistory, but in the late 1980s and early to mid 1990s, local-area networks were catching on like wildfire and by 1993 or so Microsoft noticed and made networking in Windows a standard feature.
What is overlooked today: it didn't use TCP/IP.
Nothing much did. Not even big iron or minicomputers like DEC VAX kit with VMS. TCP/IP was a Unix thing, and Unix cost $thousands just for the OS, plus $thousands more for the hardware. Even if you ran it on PCs, you needed $thousands worth of RAM. SCO Xenix was huge but for production it needed 2-4 MB of RAM, ideally 8+ MB, and in the DOS era, PCs came with 1 MB.
Part of it was the video mode. EGA 640x350x16 had 16 simultanous colors, from a palette of 64 possibilities. And non square pixels as a bonus.
They might have made better choices from the palette, but the limitations were severe.
If you really want to stab your eyes out, CGA had a mode with white, bright pink, light blue and black. I remember playing Keen on it. I've never seen that mode used for anything nice.
The CGA colour palette was horrid on RGB monitors but on Composite it could look quite good for its time. Not Amiga-level good but good enough. Of course composite monitors were not really a thing in the IBM PC world so it was to little avail. Here's an example of a screen in the mentioned horrible hot-pink palette:
https://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/20...
...and here's the same screen viewed on a composite monitor:
https://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/20...
These images come from this page:
https://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/cga-composite-graphic...
If this isn't enough it seems to be possible to coax ~1000 colours out of these cards as well:
https://int10h.org/blog/2015/04/cga-in-1024-colors-new-mode-...
By hyperman1 2026-03-0615:48 Thanks. I learned something. Also the fact that it only worked on NTSC, so people from the EU like me simply never saw the nicer variant
By xattt 2026-03-0513:41 > bright pink, light blue
This is magenta/cyan mode is essentially the proto-cyberpunk aesthetic.
I was found of Windows 3.1 though, it wasn't the Amiga that I envied from everyone else on my group, but I still could have my share of fun with Borland compilers.
By lproven 2026-03-0613:56 Well, it was a breath of fresh air after even 3.0 let alone Windows 2.
But personally, I enjoyed NT 3.1 more. Built-in PPP so I could dial up to CompuServe and get on the Net. Not the web, which barely existed yet, but the Internet. Grab my email at the same time as I downloaded some files over FTP and grabbed the latest from my newsgroups.
At the same time, I had all of MS Office open, and a few command prompts, and a connection to the big office VAX watching that it was happy...
I enjoyed taunting Amiga owners about Real Multitasking on Windows. :-D I was about 25 at the time, in my defence.
> Perhaps aesthetic - both Windows 1.0 and 2.0 were (to me at least) very ugly.
Microsoft got back to the roots with Windows 10 and 11.
Either this is sarcasm or you and me are the only two people here that actually like Win11.
By lproven 2026-03-0613:57 Er... he's saying Windows 1 was really ugly, and with Win11, MS has got back to its roots. In other words, Win11 is also really ugly.
Cosmetically, it's all right, sometimes pretty. I like the Bing Wallpaper thing.
Functionally, 11 is a pile of organic fertiliser.
By tboughen 2026-03-0513:56 I don't like it because, after upgrading from Windows 10, my computer can no longer go to sleep and I can no longer connect to Minecraft servers. These things did not happen straight away, but have developed as problems over time.
By opello 2026-03-054:58 This was discussed in Advent of Computing episode 150 "Starting Windows Up"[1,2] and the timeline of a 1983 demo which showed overlapping windows and multitasking, but also highlighted the contrast to the DR4 build from late 1984 claiming to introduce a multi-tasking scheduler.
This isn't really new information to the Stack Exchange question and answers, but it's kind of fun coincidental coverage of the topic.
[1] https://adventofcomputing.libsyn.com/episode-150-starting-wi...
[2] https://podscripts.co/podcasts/advent-of-computing/episode-1...
By CanopyCoder 2026-03-0420:437 reply The likelihood of any legal restriction was probably close to zero - it’s only from today’s era of hyper-regulation that we might even imagine something like that.
Most likely it was a deliberate technical limitation. After all, dialog windows themselves were already overlapped. I remember well what a headache it was to program and render graphical elements on those old machines (PC AT 80286 with 256 KB of RAM).
> The likelihood of any legal restriction was probably close to zero - it’s only from today’s era of hyper-regulation that we might even imagine something like that.
While it's demonstrated to be likely incorrect here, it's not a wild theory. Apple and Microsoft spent a lot of time in court over the "Look and Feel" cases regarding the windowing UI Apple felt Microsoft had stolen. The lawsuit was first filed in '88 and was widely reported on in tech and mainstream press etc, dragging on throughout the 90s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Micros....
By parl_match 2026-03-0421:20 Yeah.
> The likelihood of any legal restriction was probably close to zero - it’s only from today’s era of hyper-regulation that we might even imagine something like that.
Normally I'd agree with a statement like this. Except this is a very specific case.
By plorkyeran 2026-03-0421:431 reply That lawsuit happened in response to Window 2.0, and the fact that they adopted overlapping windows in 2.0 strongly suggests that Microsoft did not think that the change would lead to legal action and was taken by surprise.
Apple threatened to sue Microsoft when Windows 1.0 came out in 1985, but Gates responded by threatening to stop developing software for the Macintosh, pull the Macintosh software Microsoft had already developed from shelves, and refuse to renew Apple's license for Applesoft Basic for the Apple II. Sculley backed down and signed an agreement with Microsoft granting them the right to create derivative works of the Macintosh and Lisa UIs and a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual license to use those derivative works in current and future software. In return all Apple got from Microsoft was a promise to continue supporting Word and Excel on the Mac until October 1986, which they would have done anyway.
This surrender agreement is likely why Microsoft felt confident enough to adopt overlapping windows in Windows 2.0. However, Apple's 1988 lawsuit didn't get dismissed because the judge decided that Windows 1.0 and Windows 2.0 are fundamentally different, and the agreement only covered the aspects of Windows 2.0 that also appear in Windows 1.0. The case ground on for several years before eventually getting dismissed because what Microsoft had licensed from Apple were generic ideas that shouldn't be subject to copyright. For example, Microsoft were free to use a trash can to represent deleted files as long as they didn't use Apple's specific rendering of a trash can.
By WillAdams 2026-03-051:51 Not just that, he also got MacBasic killed:
Actually it was very much a legal thing. For example i can point to GEM that had to have its windows glued down because of this. See GEM 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEM_(desktop_environment)#/med... vs GEM2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEM_(desktop_environment)#/med...
Apple sued Digital Research and later Microsoft when they enabled overlapping windows for windows 2.0.
Also lol a 286 with 256kb of ram - that is a very very weird combination you would never see in a desktop. Generally early IBM PC compatibles might have just 512KB of ram but around 1985 and later 640KB really became the norm even on 8088 and 8086 based systems. I am not counting stuff that really didn't get anywhere like the PCjr and that thing was much earlier in 1983.
286 based systems once they became more common started a 1mb RAM.
By whobre 2026-03-052:30 They didn't even sue DRI, just threatened to sue: https://nemanjatrifunovic.substack.com/p/history-of-the-gem-...
By mmooss 2026-03-051:21 > it’s only from today’s era of hyper-regulation that we might even imagine something like that.
How is regulation involved? The OP's idea was that Microsoft feared being sued by other companies over IP. If there is some increase in lawsuits between companies, I'd like to see evidence.
Also, my understanding is that there was a lot more regulation in the 1970s and extending into the 1980s, though it was probably declining by then.
I don't think regulations are the legal restrictions people are referring to, but rather private lawsuits.
By saghm 2026-03-055:13 I also can't imagine calling our current era "hyper-regulation" with respect to software. The Microsoft antitrust case was only 16 years after Windows 1.0, but this year will be the 25th since then.
By undeveloper 2026-03-051:431 reply i would not describe "today's era" as "hyper-regulation". we're actively removing regulation day over day
By userbinator 2026-03-053:08 And replacing it with even more regulations.
> Most likely it was a deliberate technical limitation
At the time I remember reading that was kind of the issue. I thought the article said something like "when Gates saw the Xerox machine, the display had no overlapping windows". So M/S cloned it as he saw it.
Once M/S W1.0 was developed he saw the demo again and was surprised the windows overlapped. So they rushed 2.0 to fix it.
But funny, with all people on Linux using tiling window managers these days, it seems Windows 1.0 was ahead of its time :)
By fsckboy 2026-03-0422:49 >"when Gates saw the Xerox machine, the display had no overlapping windows". So M/S cloned it as he saw it. Once M/S W1.0 was developed he saw the demo again and was surprised the windows overlapped.
Microsoft had Apple Lisa's in-house, and Charles Simonyi in person direct from Xerox PARC, and worked on pre-release Macintoshes in coordination with Apple to develop Microsoft Word for the Mac, all well in advance of any MSWindows development. There is no way the story is as simple as the above.
By Affric 2026-03-0422:04 Yeah, it’s interesting how the desktop metaphor evolved over time but increasing display size and the ability to have multiple workspaces surely is a huge part of what makes tiling almost work.
And tiling still largely doesn't work with small windows.
You can tile windows in Windows as well with the windows key+ arrow buttons.
The default is just left, right, and top, bottom but if you install Power Toys and use Fancy Zones you can customize the zones https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzon....
There’s also Crop and Lock which can help you cut out extraneous parts of certain windows
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/crop-and...
> You can tile windows in Windows as well with the windows key+ arrow buttons.
_only_ if you enable hard corners, or something like this, which makes moving windows between screens, difficult.
By lovich 2026-03-0521:00 What makes it hard to move windows between screens? You can do it with the key command or by dragging with the mouse.
I have a three monitor setup and have no problem rearranging the windows as I please
They are a bit out of fashion these days.
The main use-case was multiplexing terminals and, after tmux provided a solution that was usable by normal users, it seduced people away.
Also, mouse-first tiling was introduced on Windows so nowadays it is almost universal to have a degree of tiling.
They are nice for terminals and browsing properly-written web pages but for anything with an aspect ratio or a fixed size they are clumsy.
Modern tiling-wms often have a floating mode so the distinction is more keyboard-wm vs mouse-wm.
> The main use-case was multiplexing terminals and, after tmux provided a solution that was usable by normal users, it seduced people away.
Are you sure about this history? I'd always heard that GNU Screen had been popular for a while before tmux, and from double checking, Screen dates back to 1987, the same year that Windows 2.0 came out. tmux didn't come for another two decades.
By wolvoleo 2026-03-058:54 Yes but screen didn't feature tiling when it first came out. That came much later.
It makes sense too because at that point most terminals were still physical with fixed dimensions. Most applications didn't handle terminal resizing yet. Especially on the fly.
By avadodin 2026-03-055:53 You are right.
Although I don't know about "popular".
To clarify, my impression was that many people started using tmux around the time when it was introduced including a few who had been using screen before.
By wolvoleo 2026-03-058:53 > They are nice for terminals and browsing properly-written web pages but for anything with an aspect ratio or a fixed size they are clumsy.
True but that's also a factor of tiling being so niche. If it were more common the apps would take it into account and just not so fixed sizes as much.
There's only few uses that really require it like video.
By ok123456 2026-03-050:47 We don't have to guess about what was going on at Microsoft in those days. From "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates":
The day the Mac shipped in January 1984, Gates told McGregor to run out and buy a Mac for the Windows developers.
"Reverse engineer it," Gates told him. "I have applications like BASIC and Multiplan that we've hacked out for the Mac, and we're working on other Mac applications like Word with a graphical user interface. I want to run all those Mac applications on Windows." Apparently, Gates didn't see a conflict of interest with this strategy.
...
"How are they different?" Gates snapped back. "They both draw fucking lines on the screen, right? They both put things in windows, right? Mac wrote a windows thing, you wrote a windows thing, they ought to be able to run the same stuff together."
By KellyCriterion 2026-03-0421:38 But hey, for 320x200 (8b) / 640x400 (4b) you had a linear framebuffer early on, before VESA&Co came along :-D
(this was around IRQ13, IIRC,right?)
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