This bugs me too sometimes. It's incongruous that I can stack Gmail, docs, and my company's ticket system nearly into one tabulated window, but I have to use a completely different interface to access a local file browser, RDP, or the sniping tool.

It's funny, my version would probably just put every browser tab into a different window and just use a powerful window manager like i3 to deal with everything.

You're seeking for Dolphin or similar in a container, Guacamole for remote desktop.

These should at least get you pointed right.

Have you tried i3 on Linux? It’s probably not exactly what you’re thinking of, but you can use it very similarly.

I am using i3 but what bugs me is that tabs now seem to be part of the browsers.

There's no elegant way of telling Firefox to never use tabs, always open a new window. There are some extensions pretending to this, but the experience is terrible. There actually is a new tab created which is then detached.

I don't usually use Chrome, so I looked up wether it handled this, but it seems to rely on extensions too.

Qutebrowser works, but it has other limitations, such as poor extension support.

I've had the exact same experience you described. Realizing i3 is the way to go and apps shouldn't manage tabs themselves - trying to stop Firefox / Chrome from doing so - realizing it's not simple and the no tabs extension is problematic. Trying qutebrowser and giving up because it's limited.

I've settled on NoTabs Firefox with a userChrome.css that hides the tab bar until Firefox someday supports native no tabs.

Sounds like Ubuntu's Unity to me. My 2 cents: Now that I'm using two 4K panels I very much enjoy having 4 windows side-by-side (optionally even splitting those vertical "columns" horizontally to hold 2 windows). No more task switching, all I need is always visible - I personally wouldn't opt for a tab-based full-screen WM.

What about the other 40 windows?

Using two large monitors is bad for your neck.

I think this is doable today. Just disable tabs completely on Firefox and chrome, and use a window manager that allows you to group windows into tabs (like i3)

i3 can do all that and more If you’re willing to switch to Linux or a BSD.