A long-standing oddity of Windows is that its branded number has for some years now not matched the version number stamped into the kernel and other parts of the operating system. Windows 7, for example, reported itself to software as being version 6.1. Windows 8 is 6.2, and Windows 8.1 is 6.3.
Current public builds of Windows 10 repeat this trend – they purport to be version 6.4 – but not for much longer. Chinese site ITHome published a picture showing the version number to be 10.0. Version number 10.0 is also cropping up on BuildFeed which tracks build numbers, and has been further corroborated elsewhere.
Interesting little tidbit of information.
The versioning for Windows began back in the days when Microsoft maintained two code bases for Windows: Consumer oriented Windows 9x/Me and Enterprise oriented Windows NT 4.0. Back before Windows Millennium and 2000 editions were released, Windows 2000 was initially going to be branded NT 5.0. When Microsoft decided to maintain only the NT codebase with the release of XP, it was really NT 5.1. Vista was the next major update update to NT and it was version 6.0. Windows 7 was only an incremental update, and it was version 6.1. Windows 8 and 8.1 were just other incremental updates to the NT code base at versions 6.2 and 6.3 respectively.
So whatever brand names Microsoft uses for Windows, it has always been very consistent with versioning for the NT code base itself. Frankly upping NT to version 10.0 for Windows 10.0 is actually a breakage in the perfectly logical and consistent naming Microsoft has always used with the NT code base.
Actually, it wasn’t always logical. The first version of NT was Windows NT 3.1, so it would be at the same version as the Windows 3.1, the consumer version.
I believe the versioning can be traced back to OS/2 itself. This happened after Microsoft split off from the OS/2 2.0 project and switched fully to development of NT in 1989, it started at 3.1. Also remember early versions of OS/2 used Presentation Manager which is similar to Program Manager.
But when you think about the ancestry between early versions of OS/2 and NT, with even some company documentation detailing the lineage as NT OS/2, OS 1 and version 2 would actually be the initial versions of NT although they don’t have much relation.
To prove my point, look back at the Splash Screen on older versions of Windows NT such as Windows 2000 Professional and NT 4, the copy right is from 1985, the very same year Microsoft and IBM started the joint agreement to build OS/2 which Microsoft was responsible for.
So:
OS/2 1.0 Microsoft
OS/2 2.0 IBM
NT 3.1 (The 3.1 branding was used because of its popularity and use of the Win32 API).
The OS/2 naming seems to be more of a coincidence.
I read, from people who worked on the project, that the commercial version naming of NT was influenced by the naming of “plain” Windows. 3.0/3.1 was the version of windows in the market when NT was released, which became wildly popular. Microsoft marketing simply used that popularity, to create the illusion/mindshare of similarity between “plain” windows and NT. By that point MS could not give less of a shit about OS/2 really.
SUN Microsystems jumped from Solaris 2.6 to 7.0 in 1997.
Ubuntu started at 4.10
Probably only Mac OS which itself doesn’t have any documentation of its OS versioning from 1984. The modern OS X is probably the only actual release of an OS with a .0 to 10th release. I mean it from a tempered big bang release point of view. Since 10.2, Apple really upped the ante in terms of introducing gotta have it features encouraging upgrades.
Linux distros in general have been too crazy, some of the releases could surely be point based.
RHEL is probably a good example of versioning. The more bleeding edge Fedora is versioning was done right would probably have a version at the same as its commercial counterpart.
There is this obsession of the bigger round version number means its something great.
I am glad Microsoft is realizing, the days of big bang releases are finally over. 10 is the last of it.
Edited 2014-12-01 05:00 UTC
neither windows nor [Mac OS X](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29) or any linux distro that i know of , ever matched it’s kernel/inner core with it’s branding number.
Maybe the *BSD crowd is the only one that can claim that honor.
Edited 2014-11-27 16:50 UTC
Because no single Linux distribution contributes to the Linux kernel. It is a wide group effort. And hardly any distribution is going to bother releasing new installation media for each upstream kernel release.
I figured since the Mac has been at 10.x for a long time I assumed it was better. Now that Windows will be at version 10 I guess I will switch back. And the kernel update makes it factual. (sarcasm…sarcasm…sarcasm)
🙂
(Sidenote, reminds me of the “switch” cartoons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LsxmQV8AXk)
So this reminds me of the whole Linux distribution version jumping.
I believe that’s why Slackware jumped to 13.37, for a while there, the distros seemed to just randomly jump multiple versions.
At least something like Ubuntu has a sane release, {year}.{month}, and Debian and Rhel last few releases have all followed a {major}.{minor}.
Suse.. I’ve never understood how they decide when a new major version is out.
I think the more interesting bit is how versioning is going to be exposed to applications moving forward.
The old way of determining version is deprecated – from now on, it will only report Windows 8.1, no matter if it’s Windows 10 or Windows 30.
Instead, feature manifests are used in-application, so applications will have to specifically ask about specific Widows versions. If an application was written for Windows 10, Windows will report itself as Windows 10 for that app.
And, that’s cool. I’ve been burnt in the past, even fairly recently, because an application says my version of Windows is too old and refuses to even try to run.
This will prevent that. It will also make it simpler for Windows to know what version to emulate (instead of having to compare an application to a list), and will prevent applications from forcing users to upgrade to support a newer version of Windows when the only reason an application doesn’t work is because it refuses to try based on version.
Interesting idea moving the tabs to the bottom. I kind of like it. Overall I think it is too minimalist IMHO.