saying "windows 98 was bad too" is just an example that Microsoft has always had poor code quality. Back in the day Linux, for all its flaws, was generaly a lot more stable on the same hardware.
microsoft has a lot to answer for after 50 years of normalizing poor quality software
Not sure about this. All OSes were janky and buggy, Linux desktop up until at least late 2000s (I've been using it since ~2000), early Mac OS X, I don't even want to talk about classic Mac OS which was an abomination. Software quality and user experience was notoriously worse than it is today. This applies to everything - I've lost a ton of work to bugs in ZBrush, Maya, Word, FL Studio, backup software, and more.