Love how we had fancy glass transparency effects calculated in software (see also - enlightenment ) then shit got slow, and now we're back transparency stuff working again but instead of hand optimized assembly we're throwing a giant ass GPU at the problem.
Though I do have to admit they maybe the resolution increases are to blame for part of that, alpha blending 800x600 is easier than alpha blending a 4k ultra wide with HDR at 120hz...
That's always the excuse for sloppy programming: "Things are bigger now". The truth is: CPU and RAM progressed at a speed not just a bit but much faster than real estate (pixels) growth and refresh rate.
Anyways... IceWM used to be my window manager of choice but since many years now I'm a happy camper with The Awesome WM (a tiling WM, but it can of course also be used in floating mode: one of my virtual desktop is always in "floating" mode).
As you say, purely software rendering was almost certainly infeasible to scale as resolution and refresh rates went up, but we've had at least a decade of having stupidly powerful 2D GPU hardware in all our shit.
Bring back my stupid Compiz effects. They were fun, and sometimes genuinely useful.
Though I do have to admit they maybe the resolution increases are to blame for part of that, alpha blending 800x600 is easier than alpha blending a 4k ultra wide with HDR at 120hz...
Anyways... IceWM used to be my window manager of choice but since many years now I'm a happy camper with The Awesome WM (a tiling WM, but it can of course also be used in floating mode: one of my virtual desktop is always in "floating" mode).
Bring back my stupid Compiz effects. They were fun, and sometimes genuinely useful.