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Cars have windows. Houses have windows. So it can't be windows that makes the car go.
I swear I don't understand, and he tried to explain it to me. He said it's a double meaning with Windows the operating system but I just don't don't don't get it.
Can anyone make this understandable to me? I may have screwed up the retelling, because honestly I have no idea what the hell's going on with this joke.
I would argue that:
This is not actually a joke in the strict sense of the word. There is no punchline. The humor is entirely in the context.
Your friend does not understand any of this and is just repeating the "joke" because other people laughed about it at some point. It has nothing to do with the Windows operating system, so if that was part of his explanation he is probably just making shit up to cover his own ignorance.
Interesting take, but I don't think I can agree. While typical American humor is often based on question-answer/punchline structure, many comedians managed to excel at purposefully breaking it.
Think about Joe Cera, John Wilson, Nathan Fielder even Jon Benjamin or David Cross. They are all very funny (it the audience that vibes with their style), yet usually avoid the idea of buildup-punchline.
For a more universal surreal humor you need look no further than the granddaddies of the entire school: The Monty Python crew. They often went out of their way to ridicule the idea of a punchline and were/are some of the funniest people in history.
(You could always argue that humor does not equal jokes I guess, but these were just my 2 cents)
That was exactly my main point; but thanks for sharing your 2 cents anyway, they were still interesting.