Well that's how I feel :)

Seriously, I too came from linux (ubuntu even) to osx having last owned a mac when it had a whopping 128k memory.

I heard someone say on a podcast recently that when Apple Computer became Apple (jan-07), that's when they started leaving power users behind.

Anyhow, my Lion/MC/Spaces gripes are along these lines:

1. 1-D vs 2-D grids. This is terrible for me personally.

2. Animations. If I'm typing ctrl->right/left, it means I'd like to get there more quickly than my mouse allows. The (for me) nauseating animation is just painfully slow and sickening (literally).

3. I've read many people say, 'use ctrl-<desktop#>'. Well yea that's somewhat better and has a snappier animation (like ctrl-<arrow key> had with SL spaces) but I personally find this awkward. First, if I am going to go the trouble of that, I want to get to that desktop immediately so any animation seems silly. Second, it's still 1-D thinking. Having been able to ctrl-<arrow key> to my 3x3 grid in SL was a basic with my workflow.

Now I'm sure my mother will love Mission Control, and not tire of the eye candy animations, but for people working all day with them.... ugh!

I just don't understand why Apple can't bring it's stunning "Here's how to use a trackpad" gif-like spiffy animations to the System Preferences more broadly, and add more customization to the UI in general (like turn of animations!).

I know we're the 20% and not the 80% but it does suck, making me seriously consider going back to *nix now that I'm digging deeper into vim.

Basically they stopped being a computer company and became a consumer media company.

Pretty awkward to have to first drag the window you want to take along a bit though. I'd much prefer if I could do something like cmd + ctrl + arrow to mean "move the currently active window to the next space"

I always had a 4-space, one-row layout. Wrap-around worked, but the animation was a bit confusing at first (it lets you move "right" past the last space, but the animation shows you moving three spaces to the left). I never used Spaces to move between spaces, keybindings and mouse gestures accomplished those. I only entered Spaces view when I wanted to move windows from one space to another.

If I had to use the mouse every time I wanted to change spaces, I'd stop using it too.

Be using chrome in space 1, hit a shortcut and move to space 2 while at the same time moving my chrome window over to space 2.

This took 2 minutes to set up on Ubuntu and I used it constantly.

No, it involves clicking, then holding ctrl and an arrow key to move in that arrow key's direction, or clicking then holding ctrl and hitting the number for your desired space.

So the only difference from what you describe on Ubuntu is that you have to click the window titlebar first.

At least this is how it worked in 10.6. Haven't tried 10.7 yet.