It was the last Windows version that felt it was primarily made for desktop use.
Windows 8 tried to be a hybrid between mobile operating system, and Windows 10 and onward feels more like an advertising platform for Office 365 and Microsoft’s AI services.
Was 10 actually alright early on in its life, or was I just unaware? I don't remember any of the advertising and spyware crap back when I first upgraded from 7.
Windows 7 made me switch to Linux ! I skipped over Visa entirely by using some obscure XP 64bit version for years. Then, 7 came out, and I was like "WTF is this crap ?". I was particularly infuriated by the complexity to setup network shares, you always had to navigate to some obscure menu to turn off some hidden "security" settings, but "media share" on he other hand, this shit was always ON even if nobody asked for it, or ever used it. Now I have to use Win11 at work. In retrospective, 7 wasn't so bad...
I didn't mind 7, some things I even thought were great compared to XP (like the search).
I can tolerate 10 well enough still given the de facto convenience of running windows for gaming, but the moment end of service comes around next year I'm switching to linux. I also have to use win 11 at work and it's just infuriating how much worse it is. And conveniently Linux gaming got pretty good in the meantime, and I've been told I can now even set up a windows VM with GPU passthrough that activates when I start the VM for the cases where Linux just won't work (though idk if that'll work when the issue is anticheat, but I don't play anything where that's relevant anyway).