So a blanket comment like "It's terrible" is pretty inaccurate really.
It's terrible is pretty accurate in my experience and use case
Let's face it Windows will never be perfect out the box without tweaking/customising to individual preferences. The utility/customisation scene exists for this very reason and often does a far better job than MS.
Which is fair enough, except Windows 11 has actively broken part of a design paradigm that hasn't changed since Windows 95 - combining launch icons and running applications on the taskbar (with no option to disable it).
I've not needed to install anything previously to change this, I'm not sure why I should have to start now (I've had to install explorerpatcher to make this usable, but that's brought it's own issues).
I upgrade to every major Windows version pretty much from day one of RTM and the OS at its core has always been better, more stable and faster each gen.
The core is no more stable - it's still Windows 10 (if anything it's now worse as it's got a load of overlay rubbish running on top of the native Windows 10 taskbar and gui). I've upgraded to every version of Windows at release or shortly after, but this is the only version out of the box that has had such a negative impact on how I use my PC.
This isn't iOS/MacOS where whatever you are given you have to tolerate. If you don't like bits of Windows, change it, it's easy and often free.
Except by and large you do have to tolerate it. Microsoft actively make breaking changes to stop 3rd party software - I've already experienced my Start menu completely stop working (as in not even opening) following a windows update whilst using Explorerpatcher.
Try actually taking proper control of Windows update in any of the more recent builds of 10 or 11 without having to resort to 3rd party tools like Windows Update Blocker...
Windows update is still an absolute **** show, and has been since Windows 10. 9/10 when I turn on my laptop to remote into work, I'm greeted with a "your connection is too slow" message from my remote access software, as Windows decides to hog the entirety of my admittedly rubbish 20Mbps internet connection downloading updates as soon as I log on.
Last night I turned on my laptop and then got a welcome screen style prompt informing me that I need to sign in with a Microsoft account, but that I could skip it for 3 days...