I think it used to be that the back end (hardware, kernel, services, libraries) was in many ways worse, but the front end (UI/UX) was largely better. And today

I think it used to be that the back end (hardware, kernel, services, libraries) was in many ways worse, but the front end (UI/UX) was largely better. And today we have the reverse; amazingly fast and mostly reliable hardware, solid underlying components, and ugly, hostile interfaces on top. Hence the number of folks wishing for the Windows 2k GUI on a modern NT OS, a slightly more robust version of some OS X (I think I usually hear Snow Leopard?), or those of us running CDE on bleeding edge Linux.