Maybe “great” is going a bit far for some of those. “Not bad” vs “bad” seems more realistic.

A fundamental problem with this is that "8" is two different releases (8.0 and 8.1), "10" is about 9 different releases, and "11" is three different releases so far (21H2, 22H2, and 24H2). It doesn't make much sense to lump all of them together because they share the same marketing name; technically there's no difference between going from 8.0 to 8.1 or from 22H2 to 24H2 and going from Vista to 7 or 10 20H1 to 11 21H2

I mean, apart from killing the start button and all the touch first applications, windows 8 felt really satisfying to me by eliminating transparency effects and having simpler, clearer window decorations. I hate the transparency effects in windows 7, and performance was improved in Win 8.

10 was bad 11 is a little better but no enough. With win10 they started with more annoying ads and the start menu with apps and the click bait news in the start menu

Maybe Windows 12 will be the promised "last Windows" which 10 was supposed to be.

I'd love to know the exec who ordered Windows 11. It stinks of "I need a product on my resume that I launched because being Windows 10 "maintainer" sounds so pathetic on a resume."