Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x line of Microsoft Windows, a family of operating systems. It was the second operating system in the 9x line, as the successor to Windows 95. It was released to manufacturing on May 15, 1998, and generally to retail on June 25, 1998. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid 16-bit and 32-bit monolithic product with the boot stage based on MS-DOS.