[db48x]

It gets a bit metaphysical at some point, but 'on top of' or 'after' probably are better prepositions to use when describing the relationship between DOS and Windows.

'Instead of' would also work, in the case of Windows 95, as it would be fair to say that simply exiting Windows involves resetting everything back to the way DOS had it, then rerunning DOS.

And when you ran DOS inside a window in Windows 95, then that was DOS running inside of a VM.

[narag]

I'm not sure but it seems my point has been lost in the way.

DOS is a real mode OS. Windows 95 is a protected mode. Windows 3 was some kind of dumbed-down protected mode that 286 had. Actually I believe it could work in different modes.

The distinction is pretty important. Windows 95, that needed a 386 minimum, was a true protected mode system, with virtual memory and pre-emptive multitasking. It would be absurd to call it "a DOS program" just because you could launch it from the DOS prompt.

So the same can be said of Windows 3. It changed processor mode, not so radically as 95, but enough to exit real mode... calling it "just a DOS program" is simply wrong.