Comment by Bender

I would almost agree XP with SP2 was decent for its time. SP3 introduced more bugs I'm guessing because that was the end of the line for XP. Stability as of XP made sense as well given Microsoft split the developers into common code, desktop and server. Both desktop and server became more stable around that time, relatively speaking. Both borrowed heavily from the VMS code base.

Windows 7 later on in its patch cycle was more stable in my opinion. Each time a version gets stable they make a new version full of new bloat, bugs, stability issues, crap most people did not want or need. Near the end of that versions life cycle it gets more stable and debloat scripts work better, then the cycle repeats and new junk comes out. Stability seems to leap-frog. Win 7 decent, 8 crap, 10 decent, 11 crap. This was a thing long ago with Unix kernel versions. I probably just jinxed it. 12 will probably summon the anti-christ and four horsemen of the apocalypse.