I still like the Windows 95 GUI more than any other version, though honestly I did not mind Program Manager of 3.x either.
Been downhill for the last 20 years!
Maybe - but there were some great 9x games that simply won't run on anything NT based, and the modern environment has made "easy" setups like VirtualPC extremely convoluted.
I have an overclocked K6-III+ with a Voodoo 4 and an Aureal Vortex 2 SQ2500 + Sound Blaster AWE 64 Gold with Windows 98 SE on it to run some 3D accelerated (Glide) DOS games and those few 1996-1998 Windows games that don't play nice with newer OSes.