> I didn't realize that, thanks.
No prob. I was actually rather disappointed to see that the original Win7 development (which would have been codebase 7.0, meaning a significant re-write), was being scrapped in favor of a mere bunch of "fixes" to Vista to salvage it. The project codename "Windows 7" had been out for a while, but Microsoft must have had some interesting meetings figuring out how to come out with a name for this update to Vista.
Likewise, I wonder if the next Windows ("Windows 8") will have codebase 7.0 under the hood? *sigh*
> As for NT 3, it was named that because it's desktop O/S equivalent was still Windows 3, 95 wasn't out yet.
Correct (that's what I meant by saying it was to align with the DOS-based version at that time).
> SuSE still has had significantly more version upgrades (only been out since 1994) than Windows which was the point.
Well-l-l-l.....
> Actually according to Wikipedia version 11 is already out too, so while I was wrong about that (when I retracted it) my main point that there are many more version upgrades of SuSE remains correct, does it not?
Depends on how you want to break up the Windows versions. According to Wikipedia's List of Microsoft Windows versions, we have seen at least than a dozen. Here's my own take, as a Windows user of every version from 2.x onward.
Windows 1.x
Windows 2.x
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.11WfW (very different from 3.0)
Windows NT 3.1 (first NT release)
Windows NT 3.5 (first stable NT release)
Windows 4.0 (Win95)
Windows 4.1 (Win98)
Windows 4.9 (WinME)
Windows NT 4
Windows NT 5 (Win2000 Workstation)
Windows NT 5 (Win2000 Server)
Windows NT 5.1 (WinXP)
Windows NT 5.? (Win2003 Server)
Windows NT 6.0 (WinVista)
Windows NT 6.? (Win2008 Server)
Windows NT 6.1 (Win7)
That's 17 versions, the way I count versions. Even if you argue that 2000 server and 2000 workstation should be considered a single version, that's still 16. Like I said, it's arguable depending on your view of what constitutes a "version". My view is to ignore the marketing and concentrate on significant release changes to functionality and codebase. Which as one who has worked on, with, or used Windows for nearly 20 years, I think I get to do.
That said, Windows had a few years headstart on SuSE.
No one ever migrated through all those dissimilar verions, you're getting farther and farther off point. What we had was a (now admitted) Debian user complaining about all the versions that Windows users had to migrate through, which really isn't that many when compared to SuSE Linux another poster had already specificaly mentioned. If the Debian user wants to complain about multiple versions that users have to migrate through, the SuSE user would have been the appropriate target, not Windows users none of which have been migrated through 11 versions since 94. If you can't see that I can't help you.
Don’t forget Service packs...