I love how contradictory this comment is. "There was always some critical failure... this setup isn't perfect... things really only break when..."

Everybody has different needs and something you don't care about on Windows or Mac or Gnome might be critically important for someone else.

There's nothing contradictory here. Not once do I say that I've found the best solution. I merely reached a point where more effort & time spent on this problem will only give me a worse solution. And of course this is merely for myself and everybody has different needs. I never claimed otherwise. The crux of the issue is that we all disagree on what's good and bad, what's necessary and pointless, and too many people are just willingly accepting what's being given to them even if it's worse by their own metrics.