I saw a comment from someone on another site that assumed that they skipped Windows 9 so it didn't have anything to do with Windows 95/98.
Or maybe they just wanted to skip to 10 because 9 might sound boring and 10 sounds like they finally reached a high point.
Anyways, I skipped Windows 8.1 because of the annoying start menu. Good thing I stayed with 7 and waited for 10. I gotta say, it does look good. The Start menu revamp is a welcome addition. But I'll wait for it to get ironed out.