A line of
Microsoft products that provide
OS functionality for
x86 based
PC architectures. Whether Win9x actually is an
operating system is subject to some debate. While most casual
users would agree that it is, many people who should know - i.e.
geeks - argue that it is not, since all products in the line (
Windows 95,
Windows 98,
Windows 98 Second Edition) are still based on a version of
MS-DOS. Hence, the argument goes, Win9x is merely a graphical front-end to
MS-DOS, much like earlier revisions, such as
Windows 3.11.
Win9x, for all its technological inferiority to competing products such as
Linux and other flavors of
Unix,
OS/2, and even the
Amiga OS, has been wildly successful in the consumer market (many will argue due to
Microsoft's unfair business practices), and has arguably made
PCs easier to use and more accessible to millions of
newbies - for better or worse.