The GUI apps were generally pretty bad. I didn't use the default Sun window manager (CDE), which was kind of slow and bloated. I installed either WindowMaker or Afterstep. I forget which, but it made it look like NeXT. The only GUI app I used on my Sun was Netscape. Everything else was done in a terminal (xterm window.)
I probably spent most of a week building stuff from source and customizing my system. If you wanted a "Unix workstation", Sun was the best. SGI looked cooler but often getting open source stuff built on it was a PITA.
This was during the Windows 95 / NT 4.0 era, so it was definitely a step up on Windows.
Ironically, Sun invested heavily in user studies and development for Gnome 2, which is why is was so user friendly. Sun didn't really benefit from it commercially, then thanks to thr CADT development model, Gnome 3 was a massive regression for normal users (and still was a few years ago).
I probably spent most of a week building stuff from source and customizing my system. If you wanted a "Unix workstation", Sun was the best. SGI looked cooler but often getting open source stuff built on it was a PITA.
This was during the Windows 95 / NT 4.0 era, so it was definitely a step up on Windows.