Netscape's huge differentiator was running on 16-bit Windows. All the other browsers needed either NT or a Unix workstation. This was prior to Windows95 so regular folks were still running Windows 3.1.
I remember running Mosaic on Windows 3.11 with WinSock in the 93/94 time frame. Maybe this was a 3.11 thing though... I never tried it with standard 3.1.
I don’t know. I was running it before 95 and never had NT. There may have been some random libraries like WinG and WinSock to install, but the lack of install libraries isn’t really an end user wowing feature.
That reminds me of the story of Trumpet Winsock and it's author Peter Tattam. Before Windows 95 you need 3rd party software to make a PPP connection to the Internet.
It was such a widely used and distributed piece of software - magazines would ship it on a CD attached to the cover which would usually contain Netscape as well.