They also forced us to waste relatively valuable vertical screen space on the task bar, taking away our ability to move it to the left or right screen edges.
When I started using Linux, I didn't do so because I disliked Windows so much, I just was an insatiably curious nerd.
But since then, each new version of Windows has made me more and more grateful for not having to deal with that dumpster fire on my personal devices.
The saddest part to me is that I have the strong impression it wouldn't take that much work to turn Windows into a much better system. But for whatever reason, Microsoft is not interested in making that happen. Maybe they are incapable of doing so. But the system itself not the reason.