The way i see it, once the UX "experts" moved in, the fun moved out. Because they keep adding layers upon layers of "drywall" to hide exactly how the computer operates. Because exposing those inner working may scare away dear old aunt Tillie.

DOS and early CLI Linux was straight forward, kernel booted, some text files were parses, and you could do your thing.

In contrast the number of background processes that is present to keep a modern DE upright is just nuts. And more are added with every minor release it seems.