I really liked 2000NT and XP. I thought 7 was quite solid.
Everything past that made me red in the face.
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I am all for this 100%. Buying Zorin 17 when it releases
I disagree as this funds the user desktop currently. But if your upper suggestion happens it will no longer be needed
Stock Gnome is very well polished I would say. Though I hate the default themes lol
I mean I like Windows 7 more than current Windows and I do like it but I do think it is remembered largely with rose tinted glasses.
I would also argue that Vista was no where near as bad as it was made out to be though 7 was definitely an improvement
It does fund it, but that means that Corporate interests get priority and user requests get deaf ears.
It is so not polished. It is a rough rock.
I have covered this at great length... But... I will not repeat it here. Suffice to say that is my stance on the issue.
mmmfphrugh...
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XD 
Can you link me? I would be curious to see your opinion on this. I never have any issues whatsoever on stock Gnome. Everything about it is very consistent. I understand not liking the workflow though
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Maybe? I'm not entirely convinced this is the case. In an open source culture people take the path of least resistance: build the tools they need, and fix the bugs that get in the way. The incentive is in creating a product that gets the job done reliably, and it just so happens that many of these tools are command line based where visuals are an afterthought at best.
So, I guess you are right actually, technically oriented people do not care about visuals so much.
I'm not talking about Linux being attractive to technically inclined folks but rather that it just so happens, for whatever reason, that this group makes the majority of the user base. I've also installed ZorinOS on friends and family's computers with great success, but not enough to change this statistic.
Excuse me?
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Am I the only one who used it and was not totally traumatized by it? lol
I can not even remember what they say so I might be digging my hole deeper. But it seems they were somewhat warm to it. I need to watch again later lol
I guess some people are more tolerant to pain than others, what can I say 
. I lasted about a year until I finally decided to learn how to "downgrade" to XP.
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XD. I like how you worded that. Biggest problem I remember with Vista was driver support. Drivers from XP to Vista were totally different. Every version sense has had some type of backwards compatibility (though not perfect). A lot of people claimed that Vista was a ram hog without realizing what SuperFetch was. Kinda like what happens with Gnome now
Funny thing is I was thinking of Vista the other day during the MacOS Sonoma presentation. They were talking about how you could put widgets on the desktop. I was like Vista was doing this in 2007 LOL.
I remember those useless Gadgets. No way am I cluttering up my desktop
Apple advertised this feature like it was a big deal in 2023 
Well, my memory is pretty current - I use
W7 frequently, in a virtual machine. Programming in Delphi.
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In your case I stand corrected lol
Only if auto-update is the only option followed. I checked updates daily on Win10 and win11 and security updates were at least monthly. Some counsel not installing updates straight away because bork-bork-bork but have not had a blue screen for years.
Stepping back tho, I'd rather have more frequent security updates as an option, than fewer.
As a recently ex-win user (again) .. it was odd, but odd we were used to seeing.
These sources makes interesting reading:
I'm sure sources saying Windows has terrible security are just as easy to find. But these sources suggest it's more nuanced than "Linux is just more secure".
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I think the article makes some good points, specially here:
there’s a lot more to security than the mere number of vulnerabilities which pop up in any given operating system or product. There are a number of other important points to consider here, too, such as the nature of those vulnerabilities, the likelihood of them being targeted, and of course the response and ease of patching them, among many other factors.
Here:
Some of the most critical vulnerabilities were found in Microsoft Office
And here, from the source of the article you are referring to:
That showed that unsurprisingly Adobe Acrobat and Flashplayer was the most dangerous software to have on your PC, thought Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer were not too far behind.
Coincidentally I was just reading this article about recent Windows security patches, and it mentions something very interesting:
Microsoft released a fix for a Kernel vulnerability, but the mitigation is not enabled. [...] Microsoft has not provided a reason yet that explains why the fix is not enabled by default.
So this fix doesn't actually fix anything unless you are paying attention.
And as one of the comments point out below, there are a couple of zero-days exploits still unresolved. In contrast, it seems that Linux developers do a better job at patching vulnerabilities than their competitors.
I would argue the article overall does not a good job at justifying that Linux is less secure than Windows, nor the other way around. Security is a big topic and reading "clickbaity" headlines is not a good way of staying on top of things.
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Actually, I think that's exactly my point. This forum is full of bald statements that Linux is more secure than Windows. My point is that it depends on what you mean by "more secure", and how you measure it. As you say, it's complex, and Windows isn't the security POS the average Linux user likes to think.
Not ten minutes into my current Zorin session and I got this beauty:
This is just the sort of thing that puts off people like me: people who want to escape from Windows.
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It's probably the general sense of security gathered from personal experience. Personally, I've never had any viruses or malware (that I'm aware of at least) on Linux, and I don't even use an anti-virus or anything like that. Whereas on Windows I've had to deal with them many times.
My understanding is that this is the case for many other people using Linux. Having that community repeating the same experience as I have is very reassuring on that respect.
Interestingly, I've never had a virus, malware or anything else like that on my Windows machine. Ever. Up until about ten years ago I used one of the popular antivirus/security suites. Then I stopped and relied on Windows' built-in protection and it has worked faultlessly.
To be fair, I don't cruise dodgy websites or download from questionable sources. I do use the PC for a few hours per day, every day, on average.
As someone who certified in IT there is not a chance in heck I am relying on MS Defender.
But if you use a quality antivirus your odds of issues on Windows are not super high unless you do something dumb