Comment by linguae

I also wholeheartedly agree: Windows 2000 was the pinnacle of the Windows NT line before Microsoft merged the consumer line (3.1/95/98/Me) with the professional line (NT) beginning with Windows XP, which unfortunately added all sorts of annoyances to Windows. The underpinnings of Windows are fine and are quite a formidable alternative to Unix. WSL has also been a major game changer, allowing me to have a Unix workflow without loading up a separate VM. It’s just a shame the upper layers get in the way, though the Pro and Education versions of Windows are less in-your-face with these annoyances than the home versions. I’d love to have a Windows 2000 UI (with a search bar, introduced in Vista) on top of Windows 11.