Windows 11 is a no for me.
1. I use a vertical taskbar. Now that widescreen screens are the norm, if you mostly consume reading content and you aren't coding or doing video editing, a vertical taskbar makes more sense than the default horizontal one as it gives you a bit of extra space on the top and bottom to read whatever you 're reading.
Windows 11 doesn't support a vertical taskbar.
2. I use the quicklaunch toolbar, a habit I developed since windows ME or something. On my vertical taskbar, I can fit my 15 most used programs in the upper corner. Microsoft insists that pinning programs on the taskbar is more efficient. If I pin those same 15 programs on my taskbar using big icons, they will take 3/4s of the space.
Windows 11 has discontinued the quicklaunch toolbar.
3. I still use small taskbar buttons and I uncombine them. It's still better IMO than using thumbnails, because thumbails require a click. I can have a general overvirw of the programs by looking at the taskbar. The taskbar buttons were the original tabs! Nowadays Microsoft is bragging that it's adding tabs on file explorer -and good for them- while making the taskbar less tablike!
Windows 11 doesn't allow small taskbar buttons.
Part of the issue here is that I 've been using Windows since the early nineties. With time, one gets used to a certain workflow, a certain way of doing things. I freely admit that I may very well be an old fart who is set in his ways. I am only going to get worse in this regard.
Microsoft mission is ostensibly to keep developing and keep coming with innovations, in order to improve its products and make their ease of use better,. However, a lot of the times, it feels that they want to justify their presence.
I cannot deny that over the years, Microsoft has made some changes that were positive. But there are also a ton of things that just broke people's workflow for no other reason because Microsoft was chasing the next big thing or was trying to find new avenues of monetization.
I don't know what's going to happen. I don't want go to Linux, because that would feel like opening a new more complicated can of worms. As the joke that has a great deal of truth goes, people who use Linux are people who develop software for Linux!
Bottom line. I see myself using Windows 10 for the foreseeable future.