I'm using the "awesome WM" under Linux and I find it much more convenient to have "virtual desktops" and always organize them the same way (1 for personal GMail + Google Docs, 2 for terminals, 3 for Emacs, 4 for professional email, 5 for an IDE, 6 for browsing the web, etc.) and be able to directly go to the one desktop that I need using a shortcut.

It's beats tabbing / cycling between opened apps any day.

As a side benefit, each virtual desktop can have it's own windows layouts: you like your GMail / Google Docs to be full screen, use a full screen layout. You like your IDE to use 2/3rd of the screen and a browser used for testing to use the rest: so be it.

The problem with your method is that you lose lost of time tabbing / cycling and then for the 1% of the time where you need a layout more complicated than "one windows visible" you spend time picking up the windows you want to show (and potentially manually fine-tuning their position using the mouse).

So you hardly see any value in a window manager but others hardly see the value in losing time tabbing / cycling endlessly between apps when a single shortcut can display the app(s) they want in the layout they want.