I think you've captured it perfectly with "Maybe it's daily reminder that all the luxuries are right here, right under your fingers, if only you weren't so miserably poor?"
In one of Philip Pullmans His Dark Material novels there is a race of creatures that have a symbiosis with a tree whose huge perfectly round nut can be grasped by their fore and hind limbs and they roll around that way.
Living in rural Spain service is chill. Am used to it by now. Went to an upmarket restaurant in France other day and it took me ages to realise the waiter was vibing me the whole meal for a tip. Such a weird transactional space. Person literally smiling and being agreeable for money. Insane.
I love them. They're a fruit, but are non-messy, not tart, easy to eat and calorifically denser than most other fruit. Like a healthy mini meal on the run.
In hindsight my desktop experience peaked about 10 years ago when I started out as a dev using XFCE. The move away and subsequent desktops; Gnome, Mac, Windows have not touched that golden age of window management.