Nothing I mentioned is a "workaround." Most of it has been the expected way to get to settings and programs since Windows Vista (and even more so in Windows 7, which many people love), so I don't know why you claim it's a "workaround." It's not any less usable or functional than Windows 7. It's certainly not "less stable" - I don't even know why you'd make that claim. The core OS is far more stable and MUCH faster than any of its predecessors.

The "nightmarishly bad UI" is barely even there when you're working from the desktop, so I don't really get all of the animosity. Some people just hate change, regardless of the value of the changes.

"Things that used to be two clicks or even one in XP and still are in Linux now take 8-10 clicks in and out of Metro to do the same thing."

Then you're doing it wrong. Press Windows key (or Windows+S), type, click or press enter on the one you want. For example, mouse settings - Windows key, type mouse, click one. You can do this with any program or setting. You could do pretty much the same in Win7's start menu, but it's faster in Win8. Even with Windows 7, I've never understand why people think navigating through folders in the Start menu or going through Control panel is faster or easier.

Even better, try Win+X for the "expert menu." When I work on Win7 VMs now, the UI feels slow and awkward to navigate because I can get to a lot of things much faster in Win8.1. And I use it on a quad-monitor development box with no touch.

As for "Metro" - it's not that bad. Stop whining about change. You never have to use it if you don't want to. I use the start screen for pinned tiles that show me stock quotes, weather, calendar, and news. It's handy for that. I snap Xbox Music to the side of one monitor. Otherwise, I don't use modern apps on my dev box. I do use them on my Surface for touch. Either way, I'm not forced to use it and the OS works quite well.

If you are using IE7, temporarily change the pop-up blocker settings to High - it blocks everything, and you just get to the video pages when you click the various links - not one pop-up.