> It was a GUI, developed by people that hate GUI. What could possibly go wrong?

I agree with this statement but disagree with the next one. Modern Linux GUIs still feel like they were designed by people who don't like GUIs. The only difference is that they now seem to be designed by the same people who design GUIs for more mainstream software... who hate GUIs but love pretty screenshots.

Yes, the only major application that feels like it's GUI is on-par is Firefox. I've often wondered why GUI devs don't appear to be interested in OSS. It seems to me that it's more likely that there's something in OSS projects that is hostile to quality UI design. Application developers grew attached to the crappy UI that they designed, so they won't accept improvements to that area because they're too different.

LibreOffice vs Microsoft Office discussions invariably prompts someone to mention how much they hate the ribbon interface, usually by mentioning how bad the ribbon from Office 2008 was, as if it hasn't improved at all in the intervening 13 years. I think time has proven that that the ribbon really is a far better interface than the traditional button icons and text menus for office applications. But there are people who still adamantly refuse to accept that just like there were adamant diehards for DOS-based WordPerfect.

Fair enough. I am not a regular Linux user (and when I do use it, I tend to use CLI), so do not have a critical day-to-day user experience with them.

Most of my opinion is based on "over the shoulder" observations.

Also, X11 is ghastly. Anything looks good, compared to that.

X11 by itself doesn't look like much of anything. You're probably thinking of Motif.

Yup.