Sadly, this appears to be because that stuff is hard and most hackers on Linux just don't care about it. What they do get opinionated about are things that you

Sadly, this appears to be because that stuff is hard and most hackers on Linux just don't care about it. What they do get opinionated about are things that you mention (multi desktops, launchers, search...) so they work on those. Not that that is a bad thing as such... but it leads to what you describe.