Yeah...
Ideal operating system - tiny hard drive footprint. Tiny memory footprint. Installs easily, and is easy to maintain, with drivers for everything I own common and easy installed. It would be fully compatible with Windows, in terms of networking, games, hardware, software, plug and play etc. In short it would be a streamlined, non-bloated, fast and widely compatible operating system.
I don't think one exists. And if it did, we'd all be using it. So I stick with Windows (even though I despise aspects of it) because it means I can do everything, with any bit of PC hardware and software, and I don't need to teach anyone else how to use it either.
Whilst Windows sucks big time, it has huge and rather foreboding things FOR it which I (and most computer users) cannot ignore.