Why did Windows 95 setup use three operating systems?

Raymond Chens blog and book (The Old New Thing) is an absolute delight! I always had a big respect for how intuitive the Windows 95 GUI is, and reading his description of the thoughts and methods behind its inception, it's no surprise that it became so good. It seems like Microsoft was extremely pragmatic and reasonable in many of their endeavors back then. It's a wonder how it degenerated into the absolute unit of sh*t that is modern Windows (even if the filesystem and kernel is arguably a lot better, everything on top seems to be developed by an army of interns)

Interesting take, I feel like the current iteration of the Windows UI is actually really good. Microsoft seems to be continually tweaking and improving it.

With heavy tweaking, 11 is okay... but the standard right click menu is a disaster for power users. And many other settings like the start menu they destroyed.