Welcome to ClassicPress. I used WordPress for several years, choosing it as a CMS to learn, over Joomla and Drupal, back around 2005.
At the time WP was a ‘new’ unproven app, and up until 4.9 I was onboard and productive. I always removed ‘Hello Dolly’ and ‘ Akismet’ and had a plugin to change ‘Howdy’ (so lame) and stop STOP! automatic updates. WHYYY???
With 5.0 ‘Gutenberg’ version intro I started actually hating it. The earlier lean coding environment had become a swamp. Too much baggage, fluff and ‘includes’…and the text editor – ugh!
So I kept using WP 4.9 and backed off of new develops…until I discovered the ClassicPress fork.
Wow! Thanks! I am happy now, and WordPress can go their own way, while I continue to develop functional, easy to manage websites!