[saltcured]

A lot of (older than me) enthusiasts I knew got an MSDN subscription even though they weren't really developing apps for Windows. This gave them a steady stream of OS releases on CD-ROMs, officially for testing their fictional apps. So, they were often upgrading one or more systems many times rather than buying new machines with a bundled new OS.

Personally, yeah, I had Windows 3.0/3.11 on a 386. I think I may have also put an early Windows NT (beta?) release on it, borrowing someone's MSDN discs. Not sure I had got value from it except seeing the "pipes" software OpenGL screensaver. Around '93-94, I started using Linux, and after that it was mostly upgrading hardware in my Linux Box(en) of Theseus.

I remember my college roommate blowing his budget upgrading to a 180 MHz Pentium Pro, and he put Windows 95 on it. I think that was the first time I heard the "Start me up!" sound from an actual computer instead of a TV ad.

After that, I only encountered later Windows versions if they were shipped on a laptop I got for work, before I wiped it to install Linux. Or eventually when I got an install image to put Windows in a VM. (First under VMware, later under Linux qemu+kvm.)