For me windows XP was the first actual good OS that marked the move away from nerdy PCs to big powerful hightech entertainment rigs, in fact my old XP rig already had a very similar desktop to what windows 11 can offer, the cool stuff you do in win11 I was already doing in XP. But it was Windows Vista that really ushered in that true next gen experience for me. Vista brought big multi monitors, multi cores, multi tasking, along with advancements in games, speakers, headphones and monitors. It was a true next gen leap that no other OS has done, not even close. Microsoft actually did amazingly well at making Vista. But there was so much unwarranted criticism towards Vista, like how it was buggy, ran slow, was only good on single core cpus etc, all complete nonsense. When you actually opened your wallet and got powerful hardware it was fantastic and smooth. At the time Vista had a few problems like buggy slow alt-tab under heavy multitask with aero on and frequently deleting thumbnail cache and I was looking to build a new system with Windows 7 as everyone was saying 7 is Vista done right, I felt like I was left behind and everyone was moving on. But the truth is when using 7 on my other computer I hated it, it represented a major step backwards introducing things that were just wrong and counterproductive. Long story short I released 7 was a lemon and that it wasn't as good as all the hype. What I find interesting is some of the stupid highly questionable design changes in Windows 10 were already present in 7, I didn't realize this until more recently visiting my old Laptop with 7 on it. Windows 7 for me is where the cracks started to show in Windows and singled the end of windows and Microsofts real talent. So spending years with Vista I thought it was bad and it gave me much frustration, but it turns out it was actually the best Windows ever made and it was one of those things in life that you dont realize how great it was until its gone. Vista for was like that Range Rover in TopGear Bolivia Special, "we didn't just respect them, we loved them"
After Windows 8 came out I started to become aware of something interesting and deeply profound, just how unbelievably important it is to have a good operating system, and I quickly realized I was not cutout for the rat race of constantly buying new hardware and new windows, For me A 20K system means absolutely nothing if the OS is terrible, if it is buggy with an unusable layout that comes out every 3-5years, I demand nothing short of 10years minimum. I never touched Windows 8 so I don't know what it was like, for all I know given my taste it was actually good.
At first I absolutely hated windows 10 and for a long time refused to touch it, to me it was so wrong and undermined everything one wants in a high end system, but a whole bunch of strange things transpired that for me anyway made it kinda work. First, I was forced to upgrade my old mobile workstation laptops with 7 one them as they were just too slow, god awful USB2 in an age with massive files, this gave me a few solid years of tweaking 10 and learning it inside and out. Next, 10 had an unusual long run which allowed it to mature and have its issues fixed somewhat, but more importantly it gave rise to a huge amount of mods, tweaks, hacks, scripts etc that dwarfed the Vista days, this allowed much of the problems in windows 10 to be removed or at least swept under the rug. Is it like Vista and 7? No, as far as layout and aesthetics its not great but its more advanced and stable at its core and offers more things. I view 10 as an old ex soviet nuclear submarine that some hostiles have taken over and are now using it for their own personal agenda, at this point windows is just a vessel for spyware and truly questionable stuff. Sadly I think most people will never experience what a properly debloated highly scripted Windows 10 system feels like, mine runs amazing compared to the stock version, striped out so much stuff and its just how windows should be. There is a line in the sand that I have drawn, once that line is crossed I will not put up with it and act accordingly, the line has been crossed, and that was done with Windows 11. 11 is good for security and spying on you but nothing else, the amount of work to get 10 up and running was enormous but 11 is simply not doable, its to me completely sterile, like a dead plant in the desert sun. Gamers dont understand, they just turn their computer on and double click on the steam icon, they don't see and experience all the bad stuff 11 brings with it. All the privacy invasion and horrible design doesn't really affect gaming.
So once windows 10 dries up for me I will most likely be forced to go Linux, hopefully by then it will be alot better My dream windows OS is Vista + 7's taskbar/desktop + 10's advanced core features.