they were not, they purchased what was in the stores, which was only windows. all the way from first windows to windows xp it was the biggest pile of shit imaginable. the average user wouldnt even have half a chance of installing it, and certainly couldnt use it with any kind of reasonableness, it was a giant mess, it was just the mess people were used to. Most people would throw out their computer and buy a new when windows became slow, because, of course it gradually becomes slower, makes perfect sense, no?

KDE from 15 years back was HUGELY better than windows at the time, and frankly, also windows now