It's true: roughly every other version of Windows is awful.
Windows 95: Bad.
Windows 98: Pretty good.
Windows ME: Awful.
Windows XP: Good.
Windows Vista: Errrrr. No.
Windows 7: Sweet!
Windows 8: ...
Windows 95: Bad.
Windows 98: Pretty good.
Windows ME: Awful.
Windows XP: Good.
Windows Vista: Errrrr. No.
Windows 7: Sweet!
Windows 8: ...
98 was a refinement, but also introduced FAT32. 98SE was rock solid refinement on that. (FAT32 technically came in an OEM release of Windows 95 but wasn't available to most users.)
NT 3.1 isn't on your list but it wasn't particularly good because it was really a 1.0 release. NT 3.51 was excellent.
Windows 2000 was rock solid. You could do suspend & hibernate reliably.
XP is notable because it was effectively a merge of the compatibility of the Windows 9x line, with the kernel of the Windows NT/2K line. The UI changes were not widely lauded, but were only superficial and easy to turn off.
Vista had many good technical changes under the hood especially in the kernel. Up to that point things had been engineered for being severely resource constrained. For example the default disk cache size in XP is 10MB! Networking was redone etc. It did finally take advantage of "excess" hardware. There were also UI changes that were pervasive, but still very rough, so you had to use them.
Windows 7 was a refinement of Vista, getting rid of remaining baggage and with the polishing the UI changes feels more usable.
Windows 8 has core architectural changes that don't matter to x86 users (support for ARM), and has structural UI changes to support a different application architecture (apps that will run on x86 and ARM and desktop and tablet). There is no one today who has apps they need to run on x86/ARM/desktop/tablet, but if Microsoft didn't put this support in then the apps would never exist - they had to start first to solve the chicken and egg problems. And it turns out that Microsoft would like its own apps to run across the x86/ARM/desktop/tablet range (think Office, Outlook etc). Anything they did would be problematic. If they let you run in pure "desktop" mode only, then all system apps have to be implemented twice - once for desktop and once for tablet. So you end up with a chimera of desktop and tablet, but every user will have a learning curve. However once over that learning curve they will be productive on other Microsoft properties such as the phones.
There is no easy way to do what Microsoft is doing which is a major overhaul of application architecture with all eyes on the future, not the past. Everyone else who has ever done it has had massive complaints too - MacOS X wasn't well received, neither was Gnome 3 or KDE 4. The developers all kept at and several point releases later it becomes the new norm.
And that was: * NT 3.1 - Had Windows 3.x type UI * NT 3.5 - Had Windows 3.x type UI * NT 3.51 - Had Windows 3.x type UI * NT 4 - Had Windows 9x type UI * Windows 2000 (NT 5) * Windows XP (NT 5.1 - XP x64 was 5.2 though) * Windows Server 2003/R2 (NT 5.2) * Windows Vista/Server 2008 (NT 6.0) * Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 (NT 6.1) * Windows 8/Server 2012 (NT 6.2)
I remember NT 4 was used on the main server(s) at my highschool.
I think it's safe to say, XP was the first consumer/"home" user version. Though, Windows 2000 (Professional) was used in corporate environments.
I also recall many disliked XP in it's early days(until SP2) and Windows 98 users were "never going to upgrade." Funny, how things change and yet remain the same.