MS's antics extend well beyond Windows, unfortunately. There are long blogs and writeups dedicated to it.

But what you said is also kinda true. 7 and XP worked reasonably well as long as you didn't mess with them, push their bounds too much, or use them for anything "weird." But you also probably missed a lot of dysfunction in the background.

I'm not trying to shill for Windows 7/XP era OSX or linux or anything either. But Windows has always been kinda notorious.