I still have Mac OS 10.0 in box along with the 10.1 upgrade DVD. I also have the Mac OS X Public Beta DVD somewhere still in the little portfolio it shipped in.
Wish they would go back to snow leopard for a few things that just worked better (file structure). It was probably Apples best OS release to date as far as stability.
There was an app/extension in OS 9 called Kaleidoscope that let you install themes to change your OS appearance. Some of those are still light years ahead of what we have now. I really miss that program.
I still miss Snow Leopard. One of my main gripes with modern macOS is the number of system-level features they keep dropping: 32-bit support was a biggie, and deprecating OpenGL, along with control security features you can't disable. And soon no doubt, Intel support will go the way of the dodo.
There used to be an app (Shapeshifter maybe?) that would install themes on OS X. Was pretty cool, until Apple encrypted and signed the UI resources and that was the end of that. Somehow compared to later versions of OS X, Classic seemed more "fun" - or maybe that's nostalgia speaking. It used to come with UFO themes where the scroll bars were a luminescent orange along with a crazy orange background which matched the colourful iMacs of the day. I do remember people using those themes too. Big Sur feels pretty corporate and boring IMO, very little customisation possible and a very conservative UI compared to days past. Perhaps it's a reflection of the upper echelons of Apple.
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Mac OS X Public Beta came in a brown envelope...
Shapeshifter was a very nice fun program to use.