We had CRT displays that could easily do 100 to 120 Hz. Then we regessed to LCD panels that could do 60 Hz and it somehow became the performance target.
But going from, say, a Sony Trinitron CRT [1] to one the first LCD was a huge step backwards, which is what GP is saying.
I did wait for the first LCD with DVI support before switching: for the difference in crispyness between an analog video cable and a DVI one was night and day (I also won many points when I helped friend set up a startup in southern california and we realized one person out of two had picked the VGA cable instead of the DVI one when setting up its desk / computer: so with the CTO late at night we went through every PC and changed all those with VGA cables to the DVI ones).
We're not saying modern days flat monitors aren't better than old CRTs: we're saying the first flat screens were complete suckage.
[1] even though on a Trinitron you could see two faint horizontal lines (Trinitron were still amazing)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAMDAC
Which of course you could only see in direct comparison. Which most ppl didn't have the opportunity to do, so you needed experience instead to judge that. Which most ppl also didn't have, because they've been exposed to cheap stuff only.
At 1600x1200@75Hz. Crystal clear and sharp.
I also had something by ELSA with a S3 and a translucent blue RAMDAC by IBM. Same thing. But only 2MB VRAM, and PCI. So only useful for testing purposes.
Regarding the usability under Linux, or rather support by XFree86, Matrox accelerated some graphics primitives in the DDX-layer, or whatever that was called then. So did the Voodoo3's! Independently of that Glide stuff for 3D.
Really nice to have.
(Another thing to keep in mind is that the systems of the time generally could not drive the kinds of resolutions and framerates that make those CRTs shine in some of today's comparisons. At the time the difference in quality in practice was lower because of this)
For desktop applications, the systems could. For 3D games, keep in mind that CRTs (in opposite to flat screens) could also diplay every other supported resolution sharply. The reason why many people think that CRTs were worse in practice is that many graphics cards of the time simply had a low-quality VGA signal generators built-in.
Even a now obsolete HP ZR2240w (24" 1920x1200@60Hz) was a huge upgrade from a 21" Hitachi Superscan Supreme https://crtdatabase.com/crts/hitachi/hitachi-superscan-21-cm...
That thing was at least Trinitron equivalent, if not better, because it lacked the thin wires holding the mask from within.
Now you are talking about the start of all that, OFC there were bad and cheap ones, but there was also very good stuff from the beginning by Eizo, Sharp, NEC, and many more.
Just as with CRTs.
I don't miss them.
The tradeoffs moving to even the early LCDs was well worth it. I remember people spending effectively double on LCDs at the time over higher specced and larger CRTs and being delighted with the result. eg. early LCDs were just 14inch, low res, low refresh rates when you could get a 17inch CRT higher specced in every way. People were still opting for the early LCDs. Your eyes are important!
But that was because of flicker. AFAIK, 60Hz video frame rate was considered acceptable, but on a CRT the video frame rate was also the flicker rate and 60Hz was too low for flicker.
Almost laser pointer brightness at one point on the screen which you don't consciously see because the your eyes and the hold the image for a few milliseconds but do you really want to be looking at a extremely bright point of light all day. Higher refresh rates on CRTs lowered eye strain since that point could be effectively lower brightness, just refreshing twice as fast.
I honestly don't get eye strain on LCDs nearly as bad under any circumstance. 60hz LCD was a massive improvement over the 120hz CRTs.