alt Hacker NewsI run Trinity Desktop [1] on Linux. It's basically KDE 3 kept up to date (and has been around as long as I've been running Linux), and has a more or less similar look and feel to Windows from the 98/XP days. I run it on Ubuntu (currently 22.04), but it works with most distros.
Many Linux users seem to like upgrading (if you can call it that) to the latest eye candy every time Gnome or KDE or whoever puts out a new release. I'm the opposite. I do think much of the UI work in Linux has done more harm than good. But that's the nice thing about Linux: I don't have to care, precisely because of the lack of such close coupling between the GUI and the underlying OS. I can't stand the GUI that comes by default with Ubuntu, but I just don't use it; I use something else instead.