What? Windows 7 was probably the best version of windows ever just ahead of 2000.
Windows 8 was where the cliff was.
People look back at XP through rose tinted glasses. It was incredibly insecure in every way. Vista made the security architecture changes needed. Windows 7 was polish on top.
Windows 8 was where metro, start menu ads, auto installing unwanted apps, and ruining Windows control panel / settings happened.
Half the programs I needed to use in Windows 3.1, and 3.11 required a DOS prompt to run. It wasn't until NT that almost all software caught up enough to not need that DOS prompt so much. Although AutoCAD R9 ran like crap in NT on the 386 with math co-processor. So I needed to reboot into DOS every time I needed CAD.
10 introduced a bunch of cool stuff that made it seem like it was going places: WSL, the new terminal, multiple desktops. If you're able to ignore the sad state of the control panel and settings apps, 10 was peak windows experience (feature-wise).
Then 11 came around and fucked everything up. As someone who subscribed to MS Insider to run beta builds of windows and get updates earlier, win 11 was the first iteration that really felt like there was just no upside to it. It was exactly the same as win10, but with some features removed and a much heavier hardware requirement. Even Vista (microsoft's most successful OS) had some cool stuff going for it back in the day, but win11 was nothing but one disappointment after another. Shit it wouldn't even let you keep a clock on the second screen until like a year after release.