Two Stop Bits | I would not classify win2 as OS, still relied on MSDOS.

xc8 10 days ago | parent

I would not classify win2 as OS, still relied on MSDOS.

BirAdam 10 days ago
Many people feel that way, but it had multitasking, its own APIs, its own memory management, and so on. Disk access was still handled by MS-DOS, but that was it. I’d say that it’s an OS as it is far more than a shell, but we can also use Microsoft’s terminology from the time, “operating environment.”
reply
- qingcharles 4 days ago
  I agree. As soon as you booted Windows it almost entirely sidelined DOS. DOS was more of a bootloader for Windows OS.
  reply
bmonkey325 10 days ago
Respectfully, Is the distinction important?
macOS and Next Step rely on BSD and the Mach kernel. Android relies on Linux and the dalvik jvm.
reply
- KODust 10 days ago
  Not sure if it's important, but Windows 2 is still fundamentally a graphical shell on top of DOS. I think the Unix parallel would be: is the X Window System an OS?
  reply
  - bmonkey325 10 days ago
    Ok. I will play. Is it because you invoke the shell vs having the shell started automatically. Leading to this query:
    Is Windows 95 an operating system ? If not why not. After all it relied on MS-DOS also.
    reply