> the whole desktop ecosystem are a complicated interdependent tangle of software put together by disparate teams for their own reasons.

That’s literally the case with every popular operating system though. Even macs, with Apples historically strict design guidelines, have different applications behave in different ways. And with the rise of Electron and web-based management interfaces things have only gotten worse from a consistency point of view (though better from a cross platform support point of view).

Haiku isn’t going to solve this any better than Windows, Linux or macOS have.

> Much of the libraries used break their ABIs so consistently that an army of package maintainers and a complicated management program are necessary to get any of it working together with any consistency at all

ABIs are stable in Linux. More stable than in Haiku, Windows and macOS. Maybe you’re talking about APIs? And yeah API management has historically been a pain in Linux but honestly package management is the way forward. It makes managing installs, updates, security, discovery, etc so much easier. Microsoft and Apple even know this since they’ve released their own package management (except Microsoft ripped off FOSS for theirs and Apples is so bad that everyone ignores it and uses independent FOSS solutions on macOS instead).

> All of this has lead to a software distribution nightmare

That doesn’t affect users of desktops though. Only developers. And you said I didn’t want a development OS.

> BSDs at least have an integrated base-system, but of course that doesn't include anything GUI

On some platforms it does.

> Worse, they have no stable kernel ABI.

Not a concern for desktop users. Not even a concern for most developers because you’d be generally hitting user space APIs and the kinds of developers that do care about ABIs are the kind that are doing low level enough development to purposely choose a workstation for desktop work.

> Use a desktop that is designed first and foremost as a personal computing desktop, not a disparate hodgepodge of crammed-together projects that can be kinda-sorta ok at dozens of different uses.

That’s exactly how all popular desktop operating systems work though. Windows has a dozen different API frameworks for anything “desktopy”. And that’s before you start talking about 3rd party APIs like Java, Qt, Electron, etc.

> I want it to be developed by people who give a shit about user interface design and aren't just chasing the latest mobile-inspired fads.

Unfortunately Linux seems to be the one of the few platforms that still focus on that. Windows is a mess, macOS is a mess. But some developers are doing some really good design decisions with Linux desktop environments. Unfortunately they take a lot more hunting to find and it they don’t solve the other complaints you have regarding Linux. But I do feel your pain regarding modern bone headed design decisions. BeOS was beautiful though.

> I want it to be developed by people who consider the GUI the primary interface. I want it developed by people who don't think the GUI is best suited to being the worlds fanciest tmux. I could go on.

Plenty of those types of people exist on Linux and BSD too. :)

To be honest I don’t think we are going to agree on what makes a good desktop operating system, which is fine. On a technical level I don’t think your arguments are fair but this is really more than just conversation about technology; it’s about preference and feelings. If you don’t gel with Linux then it doesn’t matter how many people say “you’re wrong” because you’re still not going to gel with it. It would be like me shouting at you for preferring coffee over tea. I do think if you don’t like Linux nor BSD then odds are you’re not going to like Haiku either. But there’s no harm in trying it.