It was also the awful amount of indirection of X(Free86/org) which made sure you had to jump through hoops to get anything on the screen. Even with accelerated hardware X doesn't feel as fast as Windows/macOS due to the insane amount of round-trips for perceived 'network transparency' which doesn't work that great and almost nobody uses.
I find it very disappointing some people are still fighting Wayland which, while not perfect, at least tries to get Linux desktops graphics stack 'on par' with macOS versions from 20 years ago...
Most clients using client side rendering which uses an awful amount of bandwidth and performs bad compared to VNC/RDP is not my idea of 'fine'.
Especially not if it's used to justify opposing a better solution.
For distant remote access with particularly animated or graphically detailed applications, perhaps. Though I'd not argue VNC as being lower bandwidth except where you've got it tuned to massively compress to the point where things that are bad through X are bad in different ways through VNC. RDP usually does better in this respect, as do some less common protocols.
I find it very disappointing some people are still fighting Wayland which, while not perfect, at least tries to get Linux desktops graphics stack 'on par' with macOS versions from 20 years ago...