1996 was the year for Linux on the desktop. FVWM, then Windomaker, then Sawmill/Sawfish, now Xmonad. Never looked back. From working at a publisher to doing development work at several companies to freelancing as hacker for hire to giving my 80+ mother a safe desktop to do administration and finances on while I live some 1300 km to the north of her, Linux rules the roost.
Why? Because it works. No nasty surprises, no forced upgrades, no nonsense.
I've come to this conclusion too. 1996 was the year of the Linux desktop. But... there's more to the story. In 1996 Linux was a clone of Unix, because there were still Unixes out there (HP-UX, SCO, etc.) that were charging $xx,000/seat. Everything good about Linux was taken from Unix.
This put Unix vendors out of business, which is unfortunate because after that, Linux had nothing left to copy from. There were no new ideas from industry. Instead, it became design-by-committee and first-come-first-serve. That's why it's taken so long for X11 to be replaced by Wayland. Many internet flame wars had to happen before Wayland was uncontroversial enough to be included.
Hm, yes, Wayland. It has not convinced me so I'm using X11 everywhere, that network transparency (through NX/X2go) is just too useful to let go. It is how my mother uses a Mate desktop running on the server-under-the-stairs here in Sweden from her laptop in the Netherlands to do her banking: Wireguard VPN + X2go. Would it work in Wayland? Probably, using VNC instead of X2go. Would it work without needing to futz with recalcitrant bits? Probably not. X2go "Just Works™" so... why bother?
Why? Because it works. No nasty surprises, no forced upgrades, no nonsense.