Unpopular opinion here, but Windows Vista was perfectly fine after SP1 was released. I migrated from XP-64 Bit to Vista and all around, it worked just as well (after SP1).

The after SP1 thing is the important bit. Unfortunately, even though a lot of issues were fixed then, it already had it’s reputation as dogshit.

The other thing is, the NT6 kernel was really strong. MS needs to decouple their UI from the kernel. The Window 11 kernel is actually pretty good. It’s the diabolically awful Windows 11 Interface that is the source of so much Windows evil.