toxicTom: For lack of options...
Windows 7 is unsupported, Windows 8/1 is heading there (and the UI sucks) and Win 10 is bundled with every consumer PC.
The problem with Win10 is not only the spying and the lack of user control, but also the terrifying absence of QA at MS nowadays.
Buggy updates
deleted all user data for some not only once but twice, and the problems had been reported by the beta users before. That is something that must
never happen.
Also a printer driver shouldn't be able to crash the system - the recent BSOD on printing only shows how rotten the core system is. A shitty driver may crash, but it has to do safely. Seems like quality standards at MS are back at Win95-level.
And then the audacity to force updates on the users. If you do that, you should make it damn sure they work rock solid on every machine.
KeBugCheck is callable by all drivers, last time i looked.
patrikc: I feel 8 (or better said 8.1) was but a bridge towards 10, think of something like an interim release. Sure, it is still supported (albeit not for long) and some people still use it, but on the whole 10 is at the forefront. It feels like 8.1 served more as a nudge into "the right direction", if you will.
timppu: I have a different view on that.
Windows 8/8.1 was Microsoft trying to push a "touch-friendly" tablet user interface to PC users in one big swoop, kind of trying to accommodate desktop PC users what e.g. Windows RT feels like. It was clear in many Microsoft's pitch talks back then that they felt that is where the PC users should be heading over time, to Windows RT.
Maybe I still have bookmarked that article by one MS boss who said back then that the future is touch-devices, and in the near-ish future mouse+keyboard will be used only by programmers and maybe novel writers, while common home users etc. would use Surface Windows RT devices and such, without a physical keyboard and a mouse.
After Microsoft saw that desktop PC users were not that happy with Windows 8/8.1 and were not adopting Windows RT devices en masse, they introduced Windows 10 which went halfway back towards the mouse/keyboard-centric user interface, that people were happy in Windows 7, Vista and XP. One of the bigger visual backpedalings being introducing back the Start menu that doesn't take your whole screen, like it did in Windows 8.
I say "halfway" because you can clearly see that Windows 10 is split between the "legacy" and "new" interfaces, and the division between them isn't as clear as in Windows 8/8.1. That also makes the user interface somewhat confusing as sometimes you end up to the "legacy" interface and sometimes to the newer one. Quite often the "advanced" options are hidden into the different-looking legacy interface.
So if anything, it it Windows 10 that is currently the interim stop-gap OS, kind of halfway between Windows 7 and Windows 10 X, Windows Cloud etc. How long it will stay like that, who knows. MS plans seem to change all the time and they are closely following how well people are adopting moving to Windows 10 X devices, Azure cloud etc., and make decisions based on that.
MS has already changed their focus related to e.g. UWP so many times. At some point they were pushing it very hard, at some point it was touted on many articles MS is killing off UWP, etc. etc. They keep trying different ideas (Windows RT, Windows 10 S, next Windows 10 X) to see if people start adopting them, and I see all those as signs of MS trying to nudge Windows PC users away from generic PCs, and away from Win32 (= "Windows API", not meaning only "32-bit") applications to which MS constantly refers as "legacy applications". "Legacy", something of which users should grow out over time.
And the thing is, i remember leaving ubuntu because they did the same thing. Touch is fine for things that your finger getting in the way of isn't a problem. It's great for main OS navigation, that is to say, and not overall UI. A hybrid system would be far, far more efficient and useful. I've heard enough people complaing about touch controls on phone games and such, to the degree that there's a small industry on making controllers for the devices. Also, trying to type on mobile is still horrid compared to a keyboard. My gf prefers to do things on her phone, but when it comes to acutally having text based conversations (as opposed to calling) or really anything other than her "tap tap games" she's even preferring of the desktop.
StingingVelvet: liNUx WilL taKE oVEr aNY daY nOw!!!
Crosmando: There's a theory that Microsoft secretly supports Linux and keeps them alive to serve as their "competitor", because they know that Linux will never threaten Windows and if MS were to become a literal monopoly that the US government would come down hard on them (as they did in the 90's).
Microsoft at one point officially supported Ubuntu, and it's no secret microsoft often uses linux servers for some things. Notoriously MS' skype servers ran on linux, i think even after they abandoned support for the linux client.