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Windows Central
Windows Central
Technology
Ben Wilson

Celebrating 29 years of Windows 95 — How Microsoft's operating system evolved since the iconic Start menu was introduced

Windows 95 virtual machine running Solitaire.

On August 24, 1995, Microsoft officially released Windows 95, its revolutionary operating system previously codenamed 'Chicago', to the public. I still remember when my parents upgraded the family PC from Windows 3.1 with a slew of floppy disks and the help of a tech-savvy friend, who helped sell them on the luxuries of a new, friendly user interface that would replace the archaic likes of the now-extinct 'Program Manager' app.

Twenty-nine years later, the impact of Windows 95 is still apparent in modern computing (and even popular culture as Finland embraced Windows95man,) with remnants of its old-school tools and apps still running quietly in the background of Windows 11.

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