If XP was secure, performant on modern hardware, stable and supported by new programs i would still be using it. More then that the reason i quit windows98 was that warcraft 3 doesn't work on it. Windows 7 configuration menus are god awful and windows10 ones are far worse then that.

You are making a fallacy in saying that old equals bad/ugly. XFCE is keeping it oldschool and can still look amazing (xubuntu looks great IMO).

There's much to talk about when talking about GUI things. Much indeed. Many things are even quantifiable, instead of being pure personal preference. Just remember that Microsoft spent a lot of effort into studies in what culminated to be windows95, while many other projects did not (the study that ended up being gnome3 is a joke in comparison).