Windows has been alternating between good and crap for decades. ME, crap. XP, good. Vista, crap. 7, good. 8/8.1, crap. 10, good…ish. 11, steaming feces. 12 will probably be at least half decent.
11 made me make that switch. My main gaming / media machine is still on W10 and will be until it dies. Then I'll finally invest in figuring out gaming on Linux.
But for day to day browsing and development. Ubuntu has been excellent and is much more snappy than windows. I also picked up a cheap ancient MacBook pro for interviews and it's a solid machine as well.
The most Windows-like desktop(and more) on Linux is KDE, second maybe to Cinnamon, and XFCE if we're talking XP-ish and classic.
On Linux, your underlying system is not reliant on your GUI. They are not bonded in any sense, and the GUI can be any number of different programs, known as Desktops.
You can run a Ubuntu system with the KDE desktop, or the Gnome desktop, Unity, or XFCE, or Cinnamon... or maybe two or three at once and choose at login! he's a madman!
I've had the opposite experience - 10 sucked, but I have no complaints about 11... Though it might make a difference that my experience with 10 was after my old (win7 vintage) laptop took the free update, while my 11 experience is based on a new laptop that came with it preinstalled...