> and it is janky as it can get, it feels like I'm using a 15 year old computer.
Ironically computers 15-20 years ago with native software ran much, much much faster and snappier. KDE3, XFCE, even Windows 98SE and XP were much faster. They were crippled by disk I/O, true, but once the software loaded, the feedback was inmediate.
Just as a bit of counterpoint, I'm still running the same hardware right now as I was 12 to 15 years ago with KDE3, nowadays KDE5 is so much faster than KDE3 ever was. Yes I need to upgrade badly, yes I was planning to just a few months ago, but prices seem a bit crazy now, so I'm still continuing with my ancient but somehow still operational hardware.
Ironically computers 15-20 years ago with native software ran much, much much faster and snappier. KDE3, XFCE, even Windows 98SE and XP were much faster. They were crippled by disk I/O, true, but once the software loaded, the feedback was inmediate.