I think serenityOS is heading that direction: "Roughly speaking, the goal is a marriage between the aesthetic of late-1990s productivity software and the power-user accessibility of late-2000s *nix."
https://serenityos.org/
I'd be delighted if something like SerenityOS, or Haiku, or hell, even ReactOS could gain enough traction to develop into a viable desktop OS during my lifetime. But I'm too dumb to do it on my own, too burned-out to become less dumb, and too jaded to feel passionate about something like that again after being rug-pulled since the 1990s. Back when I was richer, I threw money at Haiku, but in ~20 years it hasn't really shaped up into something that will supplant any of the big boys. Pipe dream. Sadly.
I love SerenityOS. Hard to say how long it will take to become viable on real hardware though. It does not seem to be a priority for the project.
Haiku feels like it is getting very close. I have been meaning to give it a serious shot.
ReactOS feels like it is never going to get there. It is a real shame.
Honestly, what I want is Serenity Linux. The Linux kernel and drivers are already fine. If it booted into the SerenityOS WindowServer ( and maybe ran Podman ), it would be perfect!
Anybody interested in Serenity or in OS design in general would probably love the youtube channel[0] of Andreas Kling, the primary author. He streams videos porting games and applications to Serenity, deep dives on individual issues, etc. Great content.
