They were also char based display at something like 320x240 resolution and maybe 16-256 colors.
Modern displays at 1920x1080 in millions of colors.
30 years ago a terminal was the whole display and nothing more. Now its a single window amid dozens of other windows including content ranging from high definition video to real-time rasterized 3D graphics.
Also, as others have noted, with many new layers of abstraction between user and system including the compositor, window manager, display manager, display server, and probably a host of others within the operating system and places I'm unfamiliar with.
VGA was introduced 31 years ago, in 1987. The text mode was 80x25 characters, 9x16 pixels/each, so the effective output resolution was 720x400 pixels. I currently develop a device with similar one, 800x480, only now I have GPU and GLES 3.2.
Back to the old times, because RAM was so expensive, that high resolution only worked in text mode, where the frame buffer only had 2 bytes per character, one for character itself, another for attributes i.e. background and foreground colors.
Modern displays at 1920x1080 in millions of colors.
30 years ago a terminal was the whole display and nothing more. Now its a single window amid dozens of other windows including content ranging from high definition video to real-time rasterized 3D graphics.
Yes, that's progress.