3.11 didn't claim to be an OS. 95 DID claim to be an OS, but, IIRC, wasn't, and neither was 98. 98 sucked until Second Edition 2, and IIRC there was this weird thing where they would only sell SE2 to OEMs, so everyone who built their own PC had a pirate copy. NT I think I used at work somewhere, and it was fine for running servers. XP was great because it was NT underneath with a snazzy GUI on top. 7 was great but, seriously, bite the bullet and upgrade -- it's not getting necessary updates any more. 10 is also fine -- you just have to turn off all the annoying crap MS turns on by default. Windows Defender is actually a good thing (although is spyware; I just assume that about all commercial software at this point).
I usually run Windows on hardware for OEM h/w support and Linux in a VM. They basically both benefit. Windows likes to be on bare metal for licensing, among other things, and every dongle has a Windows driver. Linux plays nicely in a VM, and you don't have to deal with any driver issues because the popular VM host software emulates devices that have good Linux drivers.
Your post inspired/reminded me to go try out WSL though. That looks like a cool way to run Linux and Windows together, which, ultimately is what I want. I don't get too butthurt about the privacy stuff. I do have machines that run Slackware only if I need to do something clandestine X-D
(post is archived)