Windows XP was the peek of desktops in my opinion. Windows 7 was the last time Microsoft made a good OS and Linux has made huge progress in the past few years.
Windows ME is the best edition ever.
I agree about windows xp, but I am less enthused about Linux these days. I like Linux, it is still better for me than the alternatives, but the satisfaction curve is flattening and mainly because of systemd.
I keep my wife in macos and we are both fans. She likes it, and I don't have to fix it. Macos is made of FreeBSD.
I would like to give OpenBSD a run, but don't have the nerve yet. I like BSD better than System V, mainly because of my history using Sun.
My first choice would be Solaris on SPARC. Amazing reliability and while slow generally could chew through large workloads without getting slower. It was the diesel truck of computing.
XP was a security disaster, even after SP2.
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