It's incredible how much charm there was in these interfaces, specifically in the bitmap fonts.
Were GUI applications more or less graphically diverse than now ?
The fact that almost anybody could make a Window Manager on X lead to a tremendous amount of experimentation and variety. Almost all of them were half baked and faded to obscurity, but it was a lot of fun to try them out. Also, if your bar is "better than TWM" then it's a pretty easy target to hit. These days the level of effort to even get to the baseline is way higher, one dude in a weekend can't try out some crazy idea.
It's incredible how much charm there was in these interfaces, specifically in the bitmap fonts. Were GUI applications more or less graphically diverse than now ?