2024-11-20T12:09:47.782Z
(Image credit: Microsoft)
MS-DOS, short for Microsoft Disk Operating System, was the primary operating system for IBM PCs in the 1980s. However, Microsoft’s operating system ambitions went even further back, having developed a Unix-like OS called Xinex that released in 1980 — a year before MS-DOS.
MS-DOS was a command line, text-based operating system. Users would have to manually type out commands to execute programs or navigate directories.
The Windows 1.0 GUI (Graphical User Interface) ran on top of MS-DOS and offered a new, color 16-bit interface as a user-friendly way to navigate files or run applications while allowing for multiple applications to be ran simultaneously.
2024-11-20T11:39:47.306Z
(Image credit: Microsoft)
The Windows platform came to life in November, 1985 with Microsoft’s release of Windows 1.0 — which was the company’s first attempt at developing a graphical user interface.
However, Windows 1.0 wasn’t a fully-fledged operating system like the platform we know today. Instead, it worked as more of a graphical extension to Microsoft’s flagship operating system at the time, MS-DOS.
