Unfortunately, the issue is more widespread in the world of UI design. Even in closed ecosystems like Windows, you have a random mix of different UI styles, and this cancer called “flat design” makes things even worse. Carl Svensson published a nice blog post about exactly this issue a couple of years ago: https://datagubbe.se/decusab/

Red Hat 5.0 “Hurricane” from 1997. I still have the CD.

I would rather suggest checking “about: support”, not “about: config”.

This reminds me of a certain Star Trek TNG episode titled “The Arsenal of Freedom”. Especially one specific moment of the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmDm8MVhZiQ&t=148s

I’m using https://anytype.io/. Offline applications for all major systems, synchronization out of the box.

The Ribbon isn’t the worst thing. It tried to solve the clutter of the previous interface, although I always preferred the old one.

Here is an interesting take on the problem of modern interfaces: https://datagubbe.se/decusab/

Maybe you should try Anytype. It’s Open Source, encrypted, has applications for major OSes, provides synchronization, allows export of documents to Markdown and PDF. Sometimes it’s rough on the edges, but I think it has a potential.

Take a look at DAR: http://dar.linux.free.fr/

It has many advanced functions and is actively developed (for over a decade).