I remember the same complaints when XP came out, when Win 7 came out, and when Win 10 came out.
A few tweaks, and I can't tell windows 11 from 10 or 7 now. Works just fine.
I mean I was there when each came out and I don't recall the complaints being nearly as substantial for the previous windows'. XP complaints were mostly about stability, but coming after ME it was far superior. 7 was a breath of fresh air for everyone after Vista, which I will admit I never used. 8 was pretty awful but I ended up liking 8.1.
10 was the first time since ME that I felt like it often became unusable. I would have serious UI lag or freezing, it always felt like something heavy was secretly processing in the background at the expense of my usability and performance.
after that I didnt use it for the next 3 years, until it eventually smoothed out and became solid overall.
11 is back to what 10 was at release with the added insult to fewer UI setting options, more obtrusive ads and copilot integration and you have to jump through hoops to create a local account. I am forced to use 11 at work and I have windhawk installed to shrink the taskbar, but it's far from a perfect fix.
I'm also trying Mint on a spare PC. Windows ran much faster on that PC than Mint does. And is much easier to use. I can't even get YouTube videos to play smoothly on Mint.
that's strange for windows to run noticeably faster. Mint is not always the best linux distro for given hardware. If you are using a relatively recent Nvidia you may need the proprietary driver. could also be a cause for youtube playback. But generally these issues are quick to troubleshoot with the large active and helpful mint community. My switch from windows at the beginning of this year was pretty flawless and I've been really enjoying using my PC.
but if you are happy with windows then Godspeed, just dont want you to completely disregard linux as a capable desktop option because of a few issues that might have an easy fix.