This was the OS of compromise. It wanted to be two things at once: the rugged stability of NT 6.3 and the fluid, panoramic motion of a Windows Phone.
It feels like coming home to a house that was demolished years ago. But for a few boot cycles, while the drivers struggle with the NVMe SSD and the RTX GPU, the ghost lives. Windows 8.1 Pro Extreme 64bit 2014
Critics called it chaotic. Users called it confusing. But the Extreme edition, the one floating around BitTorrent forums in late 2014, had a different soul. It had removed the hot corners. It had restored the boot-to-desktop registry hack by default. It came pre-loaded with and a suite of dark grey, glass-like Aero themes that Microsoft had abandoned. This was the OS of compromise