We had a lot more TUIs and transparent terms / libs with transparency. Things like Xchat, etc.

Oh, I was there for a good deal of it. Win 3.1 was my first GUI OS. Remember wacky compositor add-ons to x-window to get the wobbly windows and the really good transparency that doesn’t wait for you to stop moving the window to update, on Linux.

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.