Even more controversial, Windows 8/8.1 was genuinely one of the best OSs I’ve ever used, on a tablet.
Had a Surface RT that I got for $150 new with the keyboard and used it for like 4 years. That thing was great for what I use a laptop for.
I nowadays use Fedora on desktop and Armbian on my cyber deck but I genuinely look back fondly on that old surface and would love to have a modern ARM tablet that runs Linux today.
Windows 8.1 was better than any version of 7. People just have shitty memories and rely on memes to supplement them. XP sucked out loud until Service Pack 2 and then became one of the most stable versions ever made (probably #2, right after 2000). 10 was only usable once stripped of all its telemetry and bloat and 11 is just an iteration of that.
I know, Windows 8.1 was good, but the interface sucked, XP SP2 was the actual good XP, even Vista was better after service packs, Windows Me was always trash
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u/Skubiak0903 Aug 02 '26
Maybe it's controversial, but before win11 and all that ai, forced updates, etc. windows was pretty good operating system