Something to keep in mind is that you don't have to use GNOME. There are a ton of window managers that run on Linux, and you can find one that works better for you.
There's not much choice on Mac unless you install Linux on it.
There's not much choice on Mac unless you install Linux on it.
Same with X11 vs Wayland. I don't care which, I just want the one that works, and want to never hear about the other one again. Linux Mint comes with X11. It didn't work on my fairly standard PC because of something about graphics switching.
But really mac is less about having every square inch of your monitor filled with a dozen different applications sized perfectly to fit the exact information you want on these screens. You can of course do this if you like but thats not really the philosophy.
The philosophy is that this is a real life desktop. Just like papers on your desk. Do you resize papers various ways and print them to maybe 3 inches across and lay them out on your desk such that you can see every paper at once, no space from one page to the next? No. You have piles. You thumb through piles and pull out stuff you need and lay them loosely next to eachother. Nothing is fixed in any constraints. Stuff can overlap or have space in between.
This is exactly how windows management works in macos. It is simply a different philosophy, but it is much closer to how desktop management actually works in real life with a physical desktop and physical papers.
Not really. None of the "window managers" for macOS actually play the role of compositors on Wayland or window managers on X11. macOS has exactly one window manager, plus a bunch of apps that run automation against it and sometimes call themselves "window manager".
> This is exactly how windows management works in macos. It is simply a different philosophy, but it is much closer to how desktop management actually works in real life with a physical desktop and physical papers.
Most window managers (and the vast majority of the popular ones) on Linux are also like this. It's called a "floating window manager". Tiling window managers are cool but they're marginal even on Linux.
Want to start Firefox? type "fir<tab>" in your terminal and hit enter.
Want to see your files? Type "ls" and hit enter. Learn just a tiny bit about pipes, wildcards, and utilities and you can leave those mouse-pushers in the dust.
Or I could use a desktop on expend my limited mental energy on things more relevant to me. It’s far easier for me to remember things in a visual or spatial manner.
And the weird thing is that the type of mental effort required is not even a useful one per se, it's more like a strain (to me) than something that makes me sharper.
Still some things are easier in a GUI while others in a CLI, just depends on their nature and how often do you have to engage with them. But after a while navigating windows by Alt+Tab (Alt+`) or the mouse is fine really. I don't care to reach for Super+PgDown/PgUp when I can move my mouse to the corner of the screen and scroll to change the workspace.
Even when I do write code, I spend more time thinking about the code than actually writing so losing time to using my mouse doesn’t matter.
I was imprecise. I am solely talking about using a terminal emulator program on a display server, I wasn't talking about refraining from using anything outside a VTE. That would be pointless, yeah.
> there's no advantage of using the terminal just to open it.
My point is that it is. Typing 'firefox' is way simpler to open the program, than traversing an application list and selecting it. The latter can become faster once you have a shortcut, but then it's equivalent to 'f<TAB>' or '!!' and the like. Language is more versatile, that's why we use it for fast communication. If you want the scissors from someone, you tell them, you don't make gestures or draw a picture, because that's way more work (unless you are mute).