It was XFree86 -- with separate server binary for each chipset. Then came XFree86 4.0 with a new, hot thing: modularity. You could load drivers as modules, but that presented an entirely new way to make things more complicated. XFree86 became an OS in itself, including dynamic linker, PCI handling, vm86 emulator...
With Wayland, things are much simpler.
> , sysv init (no systemd)
There was bsdinit at the time. Sysvinit was considered bloated by the same types, who cannot consider systemd today.
> you had sane/not insanely bloated desktops like KDE2 or XFCE.
There were other topics, like switching from libc5 to glibc2. Again, unicode, localization, nss services, so much "unnecessary bloat".
It was XFree86 -- with separate server binary for each chipset. Then came XFree86 4.0 with a new, hot thing: modularity. You could load drivers as modules, but that presented an entirely new way to make things more complicated. XFree86 became an OS in itself, including dynamic linker, PCI handling, vm86 emulator...
With Wayland, things are much simpler.
> , sysv init (no systemd)
There was bsdinit at the time. Sysvinit was considered bloated by the same types, who cannot consider systemd today.
> you had sane/not insanely bloated desktops like KDE2 or XFCE.
There were other topics, like switching from libc5 to glibc2. Again, unicode, localization, nss services, so much "unnecessary bloat".