I’ve dabbled with Linux over the years, first with Ubuntu in the early 2010s, then Elementary OS when that dropped, and a few years ago I really enjoyed how customizable the gui was with Xubuntu. I was able to make it look just like WIndows 2000 which was really cool.
Which current distro has the best GUI, in your opinion? I find modern Ubuntu to feel a little basic and cheap. I guess I don’t really like modern Gnome. I’m currently using Windows 10 LTSC which is probably the best possible version of Windows, but I’d jump to linux if I could find a distro with a gui that feels at least as polished and feature rich as Windows 10 LTSC.
You might be looking for a KDE desktop. Many of Windows’s better more modern desktop features are copied from it, and KDE is very customizable out of the box without needing to install a bunch of extensions like you do with Gnome. KDE can be customized to fit many different desktop paradigms, with the default being like Windows 10.