Not sure if this will be an unpopular opinion but unity8 was probably the best looking and most modern looking desktop environment to date...

Followed close by pantheon...

@irene look at windows 98

Now look at windows 10

Look at ubuntu back in 2007, now back at 2018(i don't keep up with their versions)

Now take the newest version of manjaro vs the oldest os from apple.

That is at least what i get for modern looking.

@irene anything that isn't unity 7 or gnome

@irene but in seriousness I declare a UI modern when it has consistency, fluidity and contrasting colour schemes like the orange and black of unity 8.

I think windows 10 feels old because it is all about texture and shade rather than crisp contrast, plus it is a mess of styles from third to first party.

A few other things go into it but yeah I feel unity 8 ticked all of the boxes for me

Frankly, who cares if it's unpopular. You like what you like and more power to you. As an aside, I roll me eyebrows at phrases like "modern, clean UI". It's an evergreen marketing slogan which has been, can, and will be used forever. As much pure garbage has flown that banner as any good stuff.

Unity was the worst. Regardless of looks (which can be discussed as they're mainly down to preference), it wasn't based on either Gtk or Qt, making it essentially the IE of desktop environments. Also, Ubuntu was the only distro to have adopted it, making it a very niche thing to develop for. Personally I think that Canonical has a lot to be blamed for, but moving from Unity to Gnome that looks like Unity was a great decision of them. The Unity desktop should never even have been developed to begin with.

@irene by texture I mean the blur with the weird ass fucking noise layer added and the drop shadows it uses sometimes to elevate layers sometimes.

Instead of them using just simple flat layering like everyone else, they just add unneeded textures that remind me of MySpace pages with that 'edgy' neon green and purple text

@irene yes and it brings me to the point of no contrast, grey against a slightly lighter grey is not modern looking, looks like ancient windows.

But modern design is 100% subjective

@irene i don't mean the accent colour I mean the complimenting colours... You know what fuck it it's a pebkac lol

@irene it's really hard for me to explain haha, it does make sense.

Had a few people say they have the same complaint as me but it's hard to explain via text haha, for now let's just call it me being a total took 👍