I feel your pain. :-)
I have a longstanding love/hate relationship with Windows. I run Windows, Linux, and MacOS side-by-side every day, seamlessly, for the work I do. But Windows is in one respect a special case.
I really like the classic Windows desktop, as developed in Win2000 and perfected in Win7. (After that the Windows desktop turned into a pile of poo.) I like the Win7 desktop better than the MacOS or Linux desktops by far.
But the rest of Windows drives me batty at times, whereas I'm more productive in MacOS and MUCH more productive in Linux.
So my ideal computer would be Linux with the Win7 desktop. Alas, it is not to be -- the Linux folks seem to want to copy the Mac desktop instead. So on my Linux machines I use the "FlashBack/MetaCity" Gnome extensions to give me a close-enough approximation of a Win7 desktop.
As for Win11, it's a travesty. I will retire within a few years, and I hope to never have to deal with it directly, other than to help my users who are forced to use it once Win10 goes EOL.
I DO own legit Win 10 & Win 11 (which I only use either if I have to, otherwise Linux).
(BTW, I bought both for about $30 each through Kinguin; also bought MS Office 2021 (the last one that you can keep without having to “rent” it) for $29 at Kinguin. Totally legal.)
But, I use some tools to get all of the bad stuff out of the installation ‘disk’ and remake the install ISO.
Have even been able to eliminate Edge (which is not recommended), and the telemetry (call home).
So, the install ends up being bare bones with whatever drivers and dlls I need for whatever application/program/game I have to run in WinBlows. (90% of everything DOES work on Linux though. I’ve even been able to install Photoshop (which I prefer over GiMP) & MS Office, which I prefer over LibreOffice or OpenOffice.)
dayglored, I remember messing with windows 1 -> 3.0 -> 3.1 -> 3.11...
I would last a week, or so, then go back to DOS, lol.
After 3 or 4 months, would try Windows again, then go back to DOS.
The only thing I really didn’t like about DOS, at the time, was having to figure out which MEM floppy to boot with (depending on what I was going to use it for).