Yes, actual progress in meaningful operating system changes in terms of how one might write a program, or access fundamentals like identity, have really stagnat

Yes, actual progress in meaningful operating system changes in terms of how one might write a program, or access fundamentals like identity, have really stagnated in terms of making their way down to end users. We have high-concept things like Urbit that wanted to remake identity and secure communication that are utterly inaccessible to most savvy folks, never mind average end users. And in the meantime we're shipping entire Unix environments around inside OCI images to make up for the lack of consistency and portability on the backend. Regular users are left with a tragedy of the commons as paid/saas programs support integrations with other specific paid products instead of with general open standards that could foster more diversity and interoperability. Everything is tacked on at the application layer - imagine going back to the folks who designed Kerberos decades ago and telling them that bouncing the browser back and forth between websites is what we settled on! I like the new transparent theme, but yeah, it's just a GUI theme. Bring me back a consistent GUI where I can get themes from a modding community that apply to every app on the system and give me control over my look and feel! Instead, we get Wayland and a loss of 90% of the classic Linux desktop software. Bring me an OS that I can seamlessly deploy in a near-stateless/immutable fashion everywhere without falling into the trap of Nix! Instead, we get yet another rewrite of the fuckin' Ubuntu installer that still doesn't make the resulting system any more appealing for someone who would administer a corporate fleet of Linux workstations.