Windows 10? Man I feel like I'm on an ad-infested website and I need to be careful of where I click. But I'm definitely not objective here.

Lolz, I heard that already... with Windows 2000. So many (me included) spent serious time trying to strip XP of all the crap, because "Win2000 was just perfect".

In reality, XP (like 2000) was just another pile of shit. They patched the hell out of it with SP2, and still it would get owned and owned.

Vista and Windows 7 have made using Windows much safer, and Win 7 refined the interface enough to be a substantial improvement over XP. Win 7 was probably the pinnacle of pre-touch/pre-cloud Microsoft.

The main difference so far is the shortcut used to switch keyboard layout, and enabling Wi-Fi sharing in 10 is very straightforward.

The software I use in both feels just the same.

I think a lot of people were fine with 7.

If you think that's painful, wait until you find out about Windows XP[0]. :)

[0] - https://www.windowslatest.com/2018/04/04/windows-xp-is-still...

In a more modern OS, KoToR doesn't render grass even running in the same hardware.

Installing is not straightforward though, you have to load drivers into the installation environment if you're using M.2 or USB 3.x.

IMHO the effort I need to learn that causes me far less frustration than having to use Windows 10. My total experience (helping colleagues/friends with their Win 10 systems) is probably less than 60 minutes in total, but one look at that start menu with actual internet-loaded ads (!) was enough to dissuade me from ever installing that OS on any of my systems. If they're greedy enough to blatantly do that, who knows what kinds of other dark patterns lurk within that OS...