http://www.computerhope.com/win3x.htm
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Is this a recommendation? Their site seems to contradict your beliefs:
(Emphasis mine)Quote:
From the ComputerHope.com Information about Windows 3.x page
Released in 1990 Microsoft Windows 3.0 was a revolutionary operating system for the PC as one of the most used GUI operating systems.
Later Windows 3.1 was released in 1992 by Microsoft and was one of the first major PC GUI operating systems widely used. Windows 3.1 allowed users to utilize several features previously not available in MS-DOS. Some of these new features were the use of a mouse which allowed the user to navigate and manipulate data on the computer with one hand simply and easily and now did not have to memorize MS-DOS commands. In addition to the mouse Windows now allowed the user to multitask, meaning the user could now run multiple applications at once without having to close out of each program before running another. Windows along with other GUI operating systems are one of the many reasons computers have become easier and more widely used.
While you have reminded us many times that Windows 3.1 is not an operating system, and I have stated before that Windows 95 is in many ways just as much a shell that runs on top of DOS as Windows 3.1 is, the people at ComputerHope.com seem to think that Windows 3.1 is indeed an operating system.
Apparently, what constitutes an OS is open to discussion. As we know, Windows 3.1 only requires 3 DOS files to run that it does not already provide: IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, and COMMAND.COM. Alternatively, it can use IBMIO.SYS, IBMDOS.SYS and 4DOS.COM, (the first two are provided in DR-DOS, the last is an alternative command interpreter for MS-DOS and DR-DOS. DR-DOS does provide a COMMAND.COM, but I used 4DOS.COM to emphasize my point.) The one DOS file that Windows 3.1 needs to run, but that it also provides, is an XMS manager. In the case of Windows 3.1, MS-DOS, and DR-DOS, that file is HIMEM.SYS. Qualitas' 386MAX.SYS and Quarterdeck's QEMM386.SYS are suitable replacements for that particular file.
Windows 95 includes a new IO.SYS (which integrates the DOS IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS) and a revamped MSDOS.SYS (which now is more or less a configuration file for Windows 95). It would seem that if Microsoft had included IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, and COMMAND.COM with Windows 3.1, it would have been classified as an operating system by many more people.