You cross into incivility when you do that, so please don't do that. I'm sure you can make your point principled instead of personal.
As opposed to, for example, macOS, whose UI has changed almost nothing since OS X launched in 2001, and even then was not a dramatic departure from Classic which dates to the 1980s.
Because it's not broken and change for the sake of change is not an improvement.
There is nothing wrong with creating UI experiments, the problem is that they keep discontinuing support for the existing one which is not broken and people want to continue using. (Microsoft is even worse than Linux in this regard). If you want to create a new UI, create it independent of the old one and let people choose. If more people continue to choose the old one, you have lost. Try again until you have something which is enough better that it actually justifies relearning everything.
An example of this is that a few years ago everyone seems to have decided that 3D transitions are inherently necessary. Not "nice to have but you can turn it off if it causes trouble," but "if you don't have working 3D hardware you can't run this anymore."
Which would be almost excusable if the state of Linux 3D drivers wasn't notoriously bad and installing Linux on older PCs wasn't extremely common.
And they justify these things by pointing to Microsoft and Apple, but those companies have ulterior motives. Microsoft rearranges everything on a regular basis to pressure people to upgrade. Apple increases the hardware requirements for newer versions of their OS because they want you to buy a new Mac. This is not behavior worthy of being emulated.
FWIW, I noticed recently that I've been using xmonad for 5 years (+/- 2 weeks) and still 100% happy. It lets me work efficiently and nothing has changed.
When I started using Linux, it was about thinking out of the box and about change. It had many exciting window managers that put everything in Windows to shame when it came to customizing and style.
Nowadays I have the feeling, Linux has become the resort of the grumpy and disenfranchized, clutching to whatever was cool when they were young. The levelheaded and progressive jumped ship to OSX and are now probably contemplating switching to Windows 10 after Apple dropped the ball for them. This leaves all Linux progress like Gnome and Systemd maintained by inept pompous hipsters.
/rant
You are making a fallacy in saying that old equals bad/ugly. XFCE is keeping it oldschool and can still look amazing (xubuntu looks great IMO).
There's much to talk about when talking about GUI things. Much indeed. Many things are even quantifiable, instead of being pure personal preference. Just remember that Microsoft spent a lot of effort into studies in what culminated to be windows95, while many other projects did not (the study that ended up being gnome3 is a joke in comparison).
i want to bring this to lxde someday
I think UIs should either change very gradually and only in ways that literally are better, but also have a way of ensuring the options aren't removed entirely, or at the very least if the option is obscure ala options removed in Gnome 2, then they should be kept and allow someone to create a tweaking tool to change them.
If a huge change is to be made, like the Gnome Shell, then it should be done in a development release and ALL of the compatible UI should be kept on the desktop, with an easy UI option to switch between the modes. It turns out that Gnome Shell could do this - but only after a time.
UX and UIs are one of those things you really should be incredibly careful about foisting on anyone. If you do it, you need to do it somewhat gently.
Some developers even uses accessibility interface to add custom overlays & controls (Steam for instance).
For Windows there is Taekwindow, at least:
Because the people who were willing to run a Linux desktop in 2003 are not in any way a representative sample of the population. That's like saying "if assembly was good enough for the first batch of programmers, why would we need higher level languages?"
I've made peace with Breeze Dark at the moment, it's not so bad.
But optics aside KDE5 is mighty powerful. Dolphin is a great filemanager and I'm missing it on Windows. On the fly ssh/sftp/webdav is also a great feature.
The Plasma NM applet for NetworkManager is also great - especially if you often change settings for interfaces.
The menu works fine, searching is almost instant. I'm using the current KDE from Arch Linux and it's pretty stable for me.
Overall I'm happy and I'm not looking at Unity - that also has it's merits but the whole Nautilus/gvfs ecosystem was kind of unstable for me. YMMV.
What I dislike about KDE are the widgets - besides the essential stuff like time,battery everything feels clunky and slow - the system for adding them is also not so great. I've also never used 'Activities' the whole concept feels pretty much out of place. I'm also setting up my Desktop as background and ignore the "folder in a plasmoid widget" story that is bullshit IMHO.
I'm also avoiding akonadi/kmail/korganizer etc.pp - these might have improved but still felt clumsy last time I looked.
IMHO it's getting better but it's no silver bullet. For most users the default presentation and UI and settings are just confusing and ugly IMHO - if you look past that you will find a lot of good, stable and well thought ideas.
I'm running KDE now on all my Desktop Linux boxes and I can't remember the last time I had some hassle with it. It does what I want, it goes mostly out of my way and it doesn't look too bad.
For all the stuff it only uses 300-400MB RSS memory after a fresh reboot with a few Konsole windows running.
But to be honest my perfect linux enviroment was kde 3.5. And I don't think "regular" people had any problems with uncanny valley. When I left for university I installed kde 3.5 on my parents' and my sisters' computers. My sister switched to windows 8 years later because of some apps she needs for work, parents still use Linux (but recently I installed them kde 5).
2003 desktop environment was fine. Actually, there weren't significant benefits after Windows 95. On the contrary, modifications simply confuse users. I'm a big LXDE & MATE fan for this reason. If it works, don't fix it.
Of all the window managers and desktop environments I have tried the last years on Linux, Unity, Gnome3, and Cinnamon are the only ones that don't look and behave as if they are from fucking 2003. Those others might be enough for those people who have stopped adapting and like to be left alone under their rock, but for me it's just frustrating having to use Desktops that are basically some half baked variation of Windows XP.
Let me put it this way: if the desktop environments you so eloquently despise wouldn't exist, I would be writing this comment on a Mac and not on Linux.