Windows 7 was pretty, it was customisable, it was stable. And microshaft had yet to start fucking about with ads everywhere and invasive "features". Peak windows right there.
XP was also pretty good for its time. At that point Linux and OSX had caught up and surpassed it in many ways, but it did what it had to without getting in the way.
95 was an innovator if anything, ahead of pretty much anything else on desktop at the time, even if it DID fart and die whenever someone looked at it funny.
It was always a proprietary creation by an anticompetitive tech megacorp, and therefore bad from THAT angle, but it didn't start being truly shite from a pure user experience angle until like. 8.
7 from start to finish was the most polished and stable imo. Early 10, I would put right up there with it. 8.1 wasnt as awful as many claimed, despite gui changes. Xp took FOREVER to get to a good place, 95 was jank city.
Kind of, to varying degrees. Posting the ones I've actually used enough to have an opinion:
Win 3 through 3.11 and below: Limited
Win 9x: unstable
Win ME: don't get me started
Win 2k: Decent, actually. At least after a couple of service packs
Win XP: Win 2k with teletubbies theme
Win Vista: "users are too stupid to be allowed to do this just like that"
Win 7: Decent, actually
Win 8: worst UI ever
Win 8.1: sometimes MS actually listens to feedback
EDIT: While I absolutely hated using Vista, I think it's unfair to complain about its performance compared to that of Win XP. XP was 6-7 years old at the time of Vista release - of course it's going to demand less of your PC.
but calling windows shit is unfair. shit can still help plants grow. this is the kind of stuff you lock away in a mine forever and put a sign in front that says this is not a place of honor.
It's subjective, but I clearly remember saying Windows couldn't get any worse around the time that (Microsoft was claiming that) Internet Explorer was irrevocably integrated with Windows 98.
Never believe it when someone says such-and-such can't get any worse. Somehow it always can.
No. Windows 7 was pretty good. Certainly a better desktop experience than Linux at the time (go on, roast me, I've got my flame proof undies on). Windows 10 started out pretty decent, until they ramped up the enshittification. I used Windows for over 30 years and never saw any reason to switch, although I've worked with Unix before Windows was even a thing. Only in the last couple of years did it really become unbearable. And I wouldn't even consider ever using Win11 on any personal machine.
I think Windows 7 was the last version that wasn't there for the purposes of advertising and collecting data in the effort to achieve recurring revenue.
Legitimately Microsoft was trying to make it a better product until Windows 10. 10 was a better product on accident, but it's also where they started sliding down that slope...
You are likely not old enough to remember windows 2000. It had the NT kernel and did nothing more than expected. It got out of your way so you could do work.
There have been some improvements over the years, but Microsoft's goals for windows changed after that, which is when enshitification started.
98SE, 2000, XP (Service Pack 3) and 7 were Windows at their peak.
Windows 8 and 8.1 were screwed by Microsoft's insistence at creating a more mobile-friendly OS, when the Metro menu was just bad for the desktop user experience. A lot of disgruntled 8/8.1 users did flock to 10 because having the Start menu back was seen as a compromise to having forced telemetry tracking in your OS.
As for Windows 11, it's getting super shit. Recall AI is being baked into the OS, which will effectively allow Microsoft to snoop and capture data on your computer activity. They claim to not capture sensitive info like bank details or credit card numbers, but I think that's been proven wrong.
Also, 11 is hardly an upgrade feature-wise, yet requires a significantly beefier PC, and was released at a time when the world was still going through a significant semiconductor shortage.
The only real hurdle for widespread Linux adoption is anti-cheat support. That, and either getting Linux versions of industry standard software (Microsoft 365, Adobe CS, 3DS Max, etc) or decent support through Wine/Proton.
As for later Windows versions 7 and 8.1 were pretty stable and lightweight. It was only in the later versions of Windows 10 when it became filled with ads and some stupid bloatware.
Earlier Windows 2000 and XP were of course also amazingly well made and even lighter, but weren't exactly as stable.
Windows 10 was great without the bloatware and telemetry that was slowly added to it. At first it was only a small amount that could easily be removed with a script.
I miss Windows 7 and the early days of Windows 10. Windows 7 was definitely peak Windows and I can't really remember any complaints I had with it. It did everything I needed it to and very rarely ran into issues. Gaming was great and the bloatware was minimal, at least compared to now.
Nowadays Windows is full of bloatware and shitty decisions. Gaming has been better on Linux ever since I started using it a couple months back. I'm playing games like the Final Fantasy VII Remake and No Man's Sky this past week and they've been running better on Linux.
No, it was a bit crappy before, then got pretty good, but then went to shit.
Even the solitaire game in Windows now needs an Xbox account, shows an ad before you can play, nags you for s subscription to make ads go away and keeps sending notifications for challenges.
I remember having a bit of fun playing things like Stunt Car Racer on MS-DOS back in the early 90s for a few days. Yeah, that's about it. That's the best I can do even when I'm trying to be charitable. As soon as I owned my first computer (late 90s) I bought a Linux magazine, installed a distro from a cover CD-ROM, and never looked back.
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