Hydraulic vs cable operated clutch?

In terms of ease of use... But in reverse. :)

Now the story, I am looking at converting one of the household cars to manual from auto, due to not being able to source the parts and a shop to fix the auto gearbox. It's a 1997 Citroen Xantia 2.0i 8v, first gen, with the 4HP14 gearbox. I found an identical donor car with I believe a BE3 gearbox, and a shop said they could carry out the work.

The thing is, I haven't owned a manual car since 20 years or so, and while I can drive manuals without much issue, I wasn't impressed with some more modern manuals. The last manual car I owned was a TOFAŞ Doğan S, which is essentially a Fiat 131 sold in Turkey in a different dress, a 1581cc carburetor engine and IIRC a cable operated clutch. I remember the thing being very easy to launch, with good bite point feeling.

Through the years I drove more modern manual cars for short term, like rentals and relatives' cars; Opel Astra H 1.6 NA, Fiat Egea (2015+ Tipo in Europe) 1.3 Multijet and 1.4 NA, and a few others. With all of them, the clutches felt like "rubber", with weak feedback, short stroke, to the point of stalling a couple times for each. Launching against a positive gradient with the hill hold was extra difficult; where I would simply get the clutch to bite and drive off with a quick blip on the throttle and without the handbrake in my old car, I stalled or over-accelerated because it was difficult to judge how much I would need to compensate to overcome the hill hold.

It occurred to me that, the problem could be the cable operated clutch vs hydraulic one; I was able to "feel" the clutch better with the old car because it was a more direct connection, but it would take more practice with the newer ones, despite the obviously lower pedal force required to operate the clutch.

Has anyone felt this way? Or do you think hydraulics beat cable operated in every way, and it is me having lost my edge?