Yeah I remember those early days. KDE had a 1.0 version out in the late 90s, which was perfectly usable as a standalone desktop environment, while at the same time Gnome was little more than a panel with a foot. Early Gnome was an unholy mess and remained so until the late 2.x versions in the mid 2000s. Like how many window managers and file managers did they go through? I believe they even had Enlightenment as the default window manager for a while, and then there was that weird Ximian desktop phase.
The worst is that as iconic as it is, this photo doesn’t even capture a fraction of what happened on Tiananmen Square.
The full story is much bigger and much more gruesome. You can read about it here (WARNING: link has some very graphic and disturbing images): https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs