Windows NT today is 20 years old

Sysadmins with experience today also have something to note: the legendary Windows NT operating system turned 20 years old !



The first release of Windows NT took place on July 27, 1993. It was a fundamentally new system on the new kernel, which began to be created after the cessation of cooperation between Microsoft and IBM over OS / 2 . The Redmond company was bleeding to create a new, stable operating system — a platform for decades to come — and they made incredible efforts to do this. The dramatic story of the creation of the NT kernel by a team under the leadership of the lead programmer David N. Cutler (David N. Cutler) is disclosed in several books, including “Showstopper! The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft . ”
')
David Cutler previously led the Digital Research Center with 200 developers, where he created the new CPU architecture and VMS operating system, but Digital closed this project in 1988. Cutler immediately received an offer from Bill Gates, so he switched to Microsoft with a group of 20 Digital employees and embodied many ideas from NT in VMS and UNIX. On the significant similarities of VMS and NT, see here .

The NT kernel is still widely used, including in Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows Phone 8, Windows Azure, and even Xbox One, writes Mary-Joe Fowley.

David Cutler also still works at Microsoft and is one of the main developers of the operating system for Xbox One, before that he worked on Windows Azure.

The first version of NT in July 1993 was named Windows NT 3.1. It was followed by NT 3.5, 3.51 and 4.0. Newer versions of Windows continue this numbering .

operating system	Version number
Windows 8	6.2
Windows Server 2012	6.2
Windows 7	6.1
Windows Server 2008 R2	6.1
Windows Server 2008	6.0
Windows vista	6.0
Windows Server 2003 R2	5.2
Windows Server 2003	5.2
Windows XP 64-Bit Edition	5.2
Windows xp	5.1
Windows 2000	5.0