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Why did Windows 95 setup use three operating systems?

(devblogs.microsoft.com)
304 points mooreds | 2 comments | 17 Nov 24 19:54 UTC | HN request time: 0.439s | source
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reddalo ◴[17 Nov 24 21:02 UTC] No.42167210[source]▶
Don't modern versions of Windows do the same? For example, I clearly remember that the Windows 10 installer first launches a Windows 7-like environment.
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zokier ◴[17 Nov 24 22:01 UTC] No.42167711[source]▶
Aren't all modern (>xp) windowses just NT6 under the hood? Is there such clear delineation between 7 and 10 for example?
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rbanffy ◴[17 Nov 24 22:09 UTC] No.42167791[source]▶
It feels like NT4, with 2000 on top of it, then a layer of XP, then Vista, then 7, then 8, then 10, and, finally, 11.

It’s not uncommon to do something that lands me on a dialog box I still remember from Windows NT 3.1. The upside is that they take backwards compatibility very seriously, probably only second to IBM.

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1. rjh29 ◴[18 Nov 24 02:04 UTC] No.42169090[source]▶
IIRC there is only a single Windows 3.1 dialog box in Windows 11 (ODBC Microsoft Access Setup -> Select Resource file chooser). Lucky you.
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2. reddalo ◴[18 Nov 24 06:50 UTC] No.42170338[source]▶
Windows 10 also had a Windows 3.1 dialog in the Fonts folder (when you try to add a new font), but they fixed it in Windows 11.