Agreed with Win 7 being the last decent that had meaningful UI features (e.g. showing progress in the task bar, good grouping navigation, the bottom right corner was clickable to see desktop, etc). 

At the same time the Linux DEs are now much better. My go-to is to install minimal Debian (maybe I should write a tutorial for how to install it without the built in apps) with GNOME, one or two extensions and a browser. Super smooth experience even on older laptops (PC and Mac).

nout

Even Win XP was much stable, but browsers and apps no longer support it.

For a simple text editor / browser it was enough.

Nowadays is insane to run a Win10 or 11 even just for browsing.

tech

Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

the last usable windoze was Win 7.
Even Win XP was much stable, but browsers and apps no longer support it.
For a simple text editor / browser it was enough.
Nowadays is insane to run a Win10 or 11 even just for browsing.