What is the difference between DOS and Windows environment?

In the DOS environment, all your commands are entered from a prompt, perhaps looking something like this ">C:".

In the Windows environment, all your commands are initiated from an icon instead of having to remember what they were as was the case with DOS.

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Answer

DOS (disk operating system) preceded Microsoft's Windows OS. DOS was originally developed for mainframes in the late 1950s and was a keyboard or punch-card command driven OS. Operators were essential to running the systems. They entered in start, batch, check-point, cancel and print commands. In the late 1970s people at MIT and Stanford began adapting a simple DOS to the newly invented microprocessors and for about 10 years DOS was the king of "early PCs." The early Apple-I computer ran DOS on a proprietary Motorola chip set.
Then Microsoft moved away from DOS toward a graphical user interface like the one Apple had created for its Macintosh line of personal systems. So keyboard commands were replaced with point-and-click (mouse) mechanisms to initiate computer functions. Click on a desktop folder icon to show file management information instead of DIR *.exe in DOS. Click on MediaPlayer to play MP3 audio instead of RUN ZOOMER C:\music\ FLIGHT.mp3 and so forth.
As great as the divide from DOS to Windows, the divide from Windows to the NOS (next OS) is far beyond the much praised Linux OS; it will include international verbal commands, 3D monitors, pre-emptive error elimination, universal self-interfacing to any connected devices, total immunity from intentional network attacks and run on hyper-speed devices as small as cell phones, yet 1000 times more powerful by 2010.

First answer by Bozidar. Last edit by SamStennis. Contributor trust: 38 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 2 [recommend question]