What about windows 2000, which was also considered "good"? As for windows 10 being good, I'm not so sure. It might be good now, but it was also panned on release and received 12 major updates.

Windows 2000 was not a consumer edition of Windows. I also didn't list server versions either. Up until Vista I don't recall any truly awful NT versions.

As for 10, I liked 7 more. But 10 was still and improvement over 8, so I think the pattern still holds.

>Win 8: bad

>Win 9... well, #8 was so bad they had to skip a number

If you know what to install to replace the stupid touchscreen interface with a proper start menu (eg. Stardock Start8) and disable metro ui feature, it's a great OS. You get 3/4 of the modern features of Windows 10 without the downsides (eg. telemetry, no control on updates, keyboard layout management, taskbar freezing, etc.) and an interface that's halfway between 7 and 10.

If you don't replace the start menu, I agree it's a dumpster fire and I would never use it.

I'll agree that, especially with 8.1 and some tweeks, things were much better. But I think the out-of-the-box experience-- what most consumers will be stuck with-- is a better comparison. Because you can change just about anything if you're willing to use 3rd party tools or dig into buried settings, and especially if you're willing to dig around the registry.

I see it more as:

Win 7: good

Win 8: bad

Win 8.1: good

Win 10: bad (there were early issues)

Win 10 later: good (they were fixed)

Win 10 even later: bad (remember when people's files were being deleted)

Win 10 now: good

Win 11: bad (mainly due to growing pains)

Win 11 soon: good