What VR Desktop did you use when you gave it a try?
I understand your skepticism, but people significantly underrate the quality of text that can be achieved in VR, even on today's hardware. Simula in particular has put in a lot of work in text resolution optimization (something that earlier VR Desktops failed completely at). This makes me able to use Simula for hours at a time, even on the old HTC Vive (2016 hardware). I won't lie and say it is equally impressive as a 4K monitor is today, but it's definitely usable and allows you to garner the other benefits of VR Desktop (10x more screens, 10x the size, 10x the focus/work immersions).
If you have an HTC Vive/Vive Pro/Valve Index, I can help you install Simula/give it a try. Contact me at george.w.singer [at] gmail [dot] com if you're interested.
I've tried tinkering with it for about an hour and half, mostly testing games. But also steam vr home and I was able to get to regular windows desktop view with that somehow (I don't remember how exactly how). And while the text was readable it surprised me how blurry it was. Same thing ingame, reading "books" was quite hard and I really had to move the object close to my face.