This is the problem with making a wholesale rewrite and not including good (and complete!) backwards compatibility for the duration of the transition.

> This stuff “just worked” in the late 90’s

I see you have repressed the memories of editing modelines in xfree86.conf :P

I have two displays on my computer, one is 4k and the other is 1080p. One has HDR. One is 400 nits brightness, the other is not. Games are built across several engines with an amazing collection of rendering technologies. We have apps that embedded web browsers.

I'm sure if you restricted yourself to strictly first party native applications and a single display within one or two resolutions and no DPI scaling, Wayland probably meets most of your needs now.

I had a very different '90s than you did, it seems.