@mr.simonski - Everyone likes to use that as evidence, and I think in a way it works, but really only for the XP, Vista, 7, 8 sequence. Point is you have to conveniently ignore a lot of things for that to work.
I don't know how far is feasible to go back, so I'll just go back as far as I have experience. Italics for ones nobody talks about.
Windows 95 - This is the first one I spent any real time on, and not much at that, but we have to remember there were
5 versions of 95 released. Everyone of them would have to suck to fit that 98 was good.
Windows NT 4 - Came out after 95 and before 98, more business oriented but didn't suffer the crashes like 9x did, I knew plenty of people that were running this on their desktops rather than 95 or 98 when I came to college in 1998.
Windows 98 - 2 versions of this, 98 and 98se. You'd have to pick and choose what version of 95 you are running with and what version of 98 you are going with to 'fit' that 98 was good. 98 was pretty bad, 98se was the 'good' one.
Windows 2000 - Sometimes gets mentioned when wanting to include Windows ME, however Windows 2000 is in the same class as NT4, it was a business OS. Still, if it is going to be included, it follows 98. So it doesn't fit with the perceived pattern.
Windows ME - Generally disliked, usually people complain about stability issues, a few complain about resource intensive.
Windows XP - This is tricky, longest lasting MS OS so there were many years to refine it. When XP first came out, most gamers (at least on TS, then 3dspotlight) stuck with 98se because XP was resource intensive and for years there was the nv4disp.dll blue screens that happened with nvidia cards.
Windows XP 64bit - I'll ignore the itanium build, but there are plenty of people that ran XP64 as a desktop OS. I don't think it was well liked due to poor driver support, were better off going with Vista 64 in many cases.
Windows Server 2003 - Really never ran as a consumer OS, however released at the same time as XP64 and is the same underlying kernel.
Windows Home Server - Only worth mentioning because it was a Windows release that is ignored - rightly so because it wasn't meant to be used as a desktop-consumer OS.
Windows Vista - Often chastised because of UAC and hardware requirements. UAC could be tamed and the hardware requirements weren't that high, people were just used to running an OS that originally came out in 2001. When ran on the same hardware as Windows 7, performance and experience was very similar it just took years for people to accept that, by that time 7 was out.
Windows Server 2008 - Well received, there were even pages dedicated to turning on and off certain services to get it to behave like a desktop OS. Lack of free utilities likely prevented a wider adoption (since it required server versions of a lot of software).
Windows 7 - Everyone likes.
Windows 8 - People dislike.
Windows 8.1 - Better, but still disliked vocally, people that use it seem to think its good.
So... In summary my count goes:
Good (pick your start point on 95)
Good (NT4)
Kind of bad (98)
Good (98se)
Good (2000)
Bad (WinME)
Good (XP, conveniently ignoring how it wasn't good until SP1 and really SP2)
Wash (XP64/Server 2003)
Wash (Win Home Server)
Bad (Vista)
Good (Server 2008)
Good (Win 7)
Bad (Win 8)
Bad (Win 8.1)
I wouldn't have even replied, but I see that good/bad flip flopping cited all the time and it is only true if you carefully pick and choose what releases you choose and ignore time frames. I also posted because this is a pretty quiet thread (rightly so since most of the Windows 9 discussion is happening on the frontpage, news comments). It wasn't a personal attack on you, nor do I expect people to quit repeating the good/bad cycle. Just pointing out that it really isn't true.