Oh boy.
Windows 10 may be the absolute worst experience I've ever had with Windows in my entire life. I've used it even before the damn thing even released. I joined the Insider Program and installed insider builds in the shitty laptop I had at the time around 10049. I used 9926 in a VM beforehand and the performance was awful. Under real hardware, it was around the same as 8.1. When I got a new PC later that year and around when Windows 10 RTM'd, performance was still okay, but around a year later, I realized how shit customizing Windows was compared to 7 and 8.x, and eventually UWP as a whole broke, along with Windows letting me log into my user account. It instead logged me into some temporary account. I decided to dual boot the damn thing with Windows 7 sometime after that. I still used Windows 10 every now and then on it, but the performance slowly got worse and worse with each feature update. Meanwhile, both Windows 7 and 8.1 ran like a dream. I currently run it dualbooted with Windows 10 20H2 and Windows 7, and Windows 10 literally takes around 2 minutes to dismiss the lock screen from hibernation. The boot process after the boot screen also takes another minute itself, maybe more. I have it stripped down and turned off any telemetry bullshit, and it's still extremely slow, at least booting up.
That's not the end of my rant though. I still wouldn't use Windows 10 even if the UI was unchanged since Windows 7, you know why? Due to msstyles being so damn limited ever since the taskbar got changed and the caption buttons being so big a blind grandma or a toddler can see them. You simply can NOT make Windows 10 look good. I personally hate what Windows 10's default UI looks like, other than the new Sun Valley stuff, that looks okay. At least under Windows 8.1 you could install Classic Shell or SIB and theme the entire OS to look like Windows 7. You can sort of do that under Windows 10, but the results are dogshit and also reset 99% of the time if you do a feature update that you have no choice but to upgrade to. Again, if updates could be disabled ever since the fucking beginning of Windows Update in Windows 98, why can't an OS nearly two decades newer than it do it? To baby the users? Or is it so people fork over money to buy Windows 10 Pro? Yes, I do know LTSB/LTSC exists, but NOBODY OUTSIDE BUSINESSES AND THE WINDOWS COMMUNITY USES IT. Must I remind you about 1809 and how that update deleted users' files? Or what about all the bricked PCs Windows 10 caused due to a forced bad update? Or how about the entire GWX fiasco that forced a ton of Windows 7 and 8.1 users onto Windows 10 against their will? Even MS themselves knew back in the Longhorn days to not baby the user. Guess that shit got thrown out the window. This point is pretty damn obvious to anyone with a functional brain now, but Windows 10 is taking away pretty much any control the user had beforehand. It has had telemetry in the OS ever since the beginning, and only seems to have gotten worse as time went on. The OOBE for Windows 10 forces you to uncheck a fuckton of pill buttons, make sure you don't connect to the Internet so you're not forced to sign in to a Microsoft account (that's another point entirely but you get my point), and wait for 20 years as each screen takes so damn long to load, when Windows XP had seeming so much more to load yet you can finish that OOBE in about 30 seconds. That's not even all, even if you uncheck all those boxes, you still get spied on afterwards. You need to use something like Winaero Tweaker just to remove it entirely. I would've also recommended Spybot Anti-Beacon if they didn't start to force people to fork over money to take back their privacy. Yes, Windows 8 also pulled this shit, but its to a much less degree, and unchecking the pill buttons in OOBE disables it all essentially. And also, I do know Windows 8.1 and 7 got the telemetry 10 has through an update. Since it's before Windows 10, you can just memorize the KBs and not install those updates. Also, where did their beta testers go after Windows 8.1 you may ask? They fucking laid them off so they could have stupid children and people who don't know what they're talking about go into the Insider Program, use Insider builds on their main PC, and either not use the Feedback app, put stupid shit inside the Feedback app, and if there's someone who DOES use the Feedback app and knows what they're talking about, MS seemingly ignores it. EVERY other version of Windows at least had build labs and testers who knew what they were talking about and how to actually fix issues. Children are not beta testers, Microsoft. This is why Windows 10 has been an unstable mess for so damn long. Or maybe it's because they fuck over literally every single person who uses an HDD like myself with a service that's been in the OS since 17xx that's totally not there to slow down the OS so people cave in and buy SSDs.
If Windows 11 is actually coming, which I doubt, I'm pretty sure it won't be any better than Windows 10. It'll just be the same bullshit with a new coat of paint. If you ask me, a development reset all the way back to Windows 8.1 should've been in check years ago, or ditching windows NT entirely. But whatever, who am I to talk? I'm gonna end up moving to Mint once I finally get a new PC anyway and ditching Windows outside of VMs entirely. You can 100% blame Windows 10 for that.