🚀 go-pugleaf

[I'm setting followups to comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy, because this has
nothing to do with most of the groups it is on]

Sebastiaan Ubink <ub...@worldaccess.nl> wrote:
>In message <3umd7a$m...@ixnews2.ix.netcom.com> - mcr...@ix.netcom.com 
>(Psychoboy) writes:
>> computer, but this is only because DOS uses the autoexec.bat file to load 
>> it up.  If Windows 3.xx were a true OS, there would be no autoexec.bat or 
>
>How it is started is not essential.

Finally, someone noticed this.  Whether or not something is a "true"
operating system is completely independent of how it loads.  For example,
if LILO had never been written, and so everyone had to start Linux from
DOS (with LOADLIN or BOOTLIN), Linux would still be an OS.  VAX/VMS was
an OS, even though it required a separate computer to boot (the original
VAX 11/780 contained an LSI-11 that ran the console and that handled
booting by poking the OS into the VAX's RAM).

To answer the question of whether or not Windows is an OS, we must look
at running Windows, not booting Windows.

--Tim Smith