I still maintain that Windows 2000 was the best version of Windows. It was lean enough that it ran on older hardware, used the more secure NT kernel, lacked the XP bloat, was user friendly for most users, and didn't include a bunch of unused crapware.
Nowadays my latest laptop came with Windows 11 pre-installed. It loads up, logs in, connects to the network and shows the desktop background. That consumes 5GB of RAM and 27GB of HD space. Windows 2000 did the same in 64MB of RAM and 1.2GB of HD space.
Anyway, I've replaced WIndows 11 with Linux, and booting to my desktop consumes 800MB of RAM
Nowadays my latest laptop came with Windows 11 pre-installed. It loads up, logs in, connects to the network and shows the desktop background. That consumes 5GB of RAM and 27GB of HD space. Windows 2000 did the same in 64MB of RAM and 1.2GB of HD space.
Anyway, I've replaced WIndows 11 with Linux, and booting to my desktop consumes 800MB of RAM