Yes. Someone decided that having one process be the display server (which in the x11 world is separate) and the desktop shell, and have said desktop shell be a

Yes. Someone decided that having one process be the display server (which in the x11 world is separate) and the desktop shell, and have said desktop shell be able to run basically arbitrary js code, is going to work well. And it mostly does, as long as you are foregoing the js extensibility part; otherwise (at least in my personal experience) it's a complete disaster.