Windows NT 4.0 had the same GUI as Windows 95 and was released in 1996. That's the version of Windows that sealed the deal for professional applications.

The late '90s I remember had a mishmash of NT, NetWare, and some (or maybe several) variant(s) of Unix on the bits that lived in the room with all the air conditioners.

Windows 9x and maybe OS/2 were far and away the dominant OSes on actual workstations. Macs and even aging Amigas at some creative shops, some more Unix workstations at places where most people could recognize and identify the purpose of (if not actually use) a slide rule. But what I essentially never saw on any desktops was Windows NT. Lack of driver support and inability to run many business applications kept it out of that space.

I suppose it depends a lot on geography and business. I remember Windows NT/2000 rapidly displacing Macs in the creative fields, and being widely used as developer workstations.

Especially developers moved from Win95 to NT in hordes during late 90s.

I’m trying to suss up some old memories...

But NT was the first winOS which supported multi-proc, correct?

NT4 was the first OS I could have my dual 266 intel procs run softimage IIRC

"I’m trying to suss up some old memories..."

NT4, Adaptec 2940u2w, and mirrored segate cheetah drives.

You had to space them out because a stack of two cheetahs would cook the upper one to death ...

hahaha

I actually recall that Cheetah problem. :-)