Are those the systems you learned as a teenager/young adult?

I felt the same way about XP, despite it being generally regarded as a UI abomination. I think it was just familiar.

Anyway, I eventually shook lose of that nostalgia, and for me the best usability has been more recent. The wmii/i3/sway family of window managers are have been just great: simple, to the point, and automatic.

I dunno. There are pretty clearly some bad trends in computing generally and mainstream UX specifically, but improvements are still bouncing around in the margins.