Additional screenshot, just because:

Notes: I switched urxvt for Alacritty since it let me use bitmap fonts. Also, images in the screenshot are from Unsplash: go check those people out: Agnieszka Stankiewicz (desert), and Elisa Kerschbaumer (beach).

Overly simplified Artix Linux :-)

No, it is Cozette. Specifically, the Crossed Seven Vector variant.

Feels like a thorny rose.

Like fuck all the proprietary junk and versioning, and just have a bare bones HTML ASCII extranet designed to be simple and without any bugs to patch? Obviously a naive question.

There are many ways to get that. There is the Gemini protocol, of which is plaintext, and there is also I2P, of which is a dark net (gee!) that feels somewhat like the old internet (at least, that's what some oldies in the forums say). A way to browse through there without installing a client would be via looking at here.