Windows under the hood with the NT Kernel is actually regarded among some experts as technically superior to Linux with the driver model and personalities subsystem; it’s just that the stuff above the kernel isn’t so great…
Don’t get my wrong, but me and I bleed Unix-like systems and have done for decades, but what you’re saying actually makes sense for MS as a design decision…
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Relevant:
Why the Windows Registry sucks … technically https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32275078
https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/why-the-windows-regist...
The problems with the windows registry are orthogonal to that.
(eg. Changing their save icon to an "arrow pointing at hard drive" one that's harder to visually distinguish from their download icon because they don't understand that you shouldn't privilege affordances (which only give benefit while learning a new system of symbols) over consistency with existing established iconography like the "save icon" (diskette) used by every other system.)
...or GNOME 3 ruining the "Cancel/OK in the bottom-right corner of the dialog, in that order for LTR languages" they borrowed from Apple with their "action buttons in dialog header bars" idea. (TL;DR: Dialog boxes are laid out to read like paper forms, following the writing order of prose text in the user's native language. Action buttons go in the reading-order-terminal corner for a similar reason to why the signature field on a paper form is at the bottom and why business letters are supposed to end with what you want the reader to do.)
Likewise, for dialogs where they stretch OK and cancel to full width. Now you've required the user to move the cursor much further during normal operation.
See also https://uxmovement.com/buttons/why-ok-buttons-in-dialog-boxe...
This is quite literally stuff that was covered in my introduction to Human-Computer Interaction course at university.