I definitely see this myself. When waiting for my Linux box to respond to a mouse movement or my Windows laptop to wake back up, I think back to my Apple ][ where it was never possible to enter data faster than the computer can handle it.
Right now there are 257 tasks running on my Ubuntu box. I don't recognize half of them.
I'm not sure who "we" is anymore. Smart people like yourself would not do many of the things we're seeing done. I think it's within your power to control the slippage at least starting with you. Again, the word is "tolerance". When will you say "Enough. No mas."?
If you need one, I'm happy to send you a UNIX (or simple instructions on how to build one) that does not have the complexity of Ubuntu but runs just as fast and does all the same stuff, sans the gratuitous GUI's. You can always add GUI layers later if you want them. My guess is you won't once you see how much faster things are, and how few processes you need to be running at any given time.
Right now there are 257 tasks running on my Ubuntu box. I don't recognize half of them.
It feels we are slipping backwards.