The closest would be the modern Oberon environments, but I found them weird and unusable. If Win95/FVWM with virtual desktops work perfectly well, why the change?
FVWM had great working setups on their screenshoot page. This predates smartphones I'd guess:
https://www.fvwm.org/Archive/Screenshots/2011-04-15_Christin...
Well, for one thing, all desktop environments from the 90ies started from a metaphor for the things on a physical desk, sheets of paper shuffled around, and so on; that was perfectly sensible for a target group of previously computer-illiterates that needed concepts to grasp onto.
We’re in a different world now, but user interfaces are still stuck in the past, the same way railways are designed to accommodate for Roman carriages.
By starting to design without those guardrails in mind, we could arrive at something that isn’t the local maximum of 30 years ago. At least that is my hope; who knows until we try!
>Roman carriages
That's an urban legend.
>Stuck in the past
So are pencils, erasers, and pens. And they just work.
Win 95 was propietary, yes, but the design had top UI/UX.
Add virtual desktops on top of that among an 'always on top' toggle button and you'll have everything.
