I don't like arbitrarily changing UX either, but it's not like Windows doesn't have that problem. I had massive switching headaches moving to the new "ribbon" based stuff in Microsoft Office.
Of course neither side is perfect, but I am thoroughly unconvinced by the "unusable" argument. THere are definitely biases with ignoring the headaches that Windows forces upon users.
For your first example ctrl double swipe on my trackpad works pretty much everywhere and ctrl +/- works everywhere except my terminal where ctrl-shift +/- does the job.
As for your second. This is not a common use case that any non-technical person would even think of trying. If you needed to I would suggest ignoring jackd (whatever that is) and using the gui for pulse audio control.
The second example is used by people who play video games all the time. People do it for skype/ventrilo calls during gaming sessions constantly. It may not be a common use for _for you_ but it is not as rare as you appear to think.
Again, it's just one example. Others are far worse: try to figure out how to play a song or some other audio into a skype call by piping data directly into the mic input channel. It's pretty trivial in windows, and there are third party tools with easy to understand GUIs if you can't figure it out on your own. On Linux you'll be futzing with jackd configs for hours.