Windows 10
You may remember that between Windows 3 and Windows 7, Microsoft designated each version with a name instead of a number: 95, 98, NT, Me, 2000, Vista, and so on. When the company announced Windows 7, there was actually a similar amount of disbelief; after a series of named versions of
Windows RT, which only ran Metro apps, was a new and separate beast, but it still sat on top of the core Windows NT kernel. That one is dead now.
Windows 8: Actually version 6.3
Version numbers, schmersion numbers Click Here ↚↚↚🙅
Windows 8.1: Actually version 6.3, build 9600.
There’s also the fact that the name of each Windows release doesn’t actually match the real version number. For example, Windows 8.1 is actually version 6.3 of Windows. Windows 10 is version 6.4. The last time the release name actually matched the version number was the enterprise-focused Windows NT 4.0, which was released back in 1996. Windows 2000, which was called NT 5.0 during development, was actually version 5.0. Windows XP was version 5.1. Windows Vista was 6.0, Windows 7 was 6.1, Windows 8 was 6.2, and Windows 8.1 is version 6.3.
Windows RT, which only ran Metro apps, was a new and separate beast, but it still sat on top of the core Windows NT kernel. That one is dead now.
Modern versions of Windows are still based on the Vista kernel and code base — including Windows 10, which is actually Windows 6.4. There will be some confusion if (or when) we eventually reach internal version 7.0, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
