I am coming to the opinion that Windows XP was the maximum usable interface, and we should have stopped there [0]. But then, I might just be old and telling the kids to get off my lawn.

[0] this is definitely true for Windows. All subsequent versions of Windows have had worse UX.

I thought Windows 7 was pretty good.

Vista eliminated the Fisher Priceness of XP but added a whole bunch of glowing and reflective stuff, which Windows 7 toned down dramatically.

I don’t remember if Win 7 still allowed you to have the classic start menu, but I do believe I was ok with what it did have.

there's a great add-on called... ClassicShell http://classicshell.net/

I stopped using windows after Using Win10 for a short time, but ClassicShell was always maintained and worked flawlessly... oh, dev stopped in 2017. oh well.

the source was released and there is a fork that has recent changes https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu