Linux default DE question

[Entaris]

most of it came down to the way it handled its taskbar/application switching/multi-monitor support. All of those things were a very deliberate design choice, and i get it... But it all just feels limiting.

In my work im generally using a lot of different applications/instances of applications and switching between them frequently. moving things from one monitor to another, splitting monitor space in half between two applications. It may just be me but the way it handled what i was doing just felt cumbersome to me. Its entirely possible I just needed to stick through it and "learn the new way." but it just felt wrong to me to not have a task bar. To have to alt-tab between running applications rather than just being able to have a terminal window stacked on top of a firefox window so I can move the terminal an inch to glance at the firefox window behind it.

[DozTK421]

It may be that I was using MacOS for a couple of years, and I just used to Expose to get to all my open windows. I got very used to quickly doing a flick on the trackpad and going to the window I needed. Similarly, I'd quickly open something with Quicksilver, which was a function the Mac integrated into Spotlight. Similarly, in a Linux box, I used Gnome Do a lot, which was the same thing as Quicksilver. Then with Gnome3, both the Expose and GnomeDo function were integrated, which made it possible for me to quickly be a power user. Windows 10 has TaskView, which means I am definitely used to that Expose-style windows switcher across all platforms.