I feel exactly the same way. Back when KDE was a bit messier and perhaps buggier, I tried to muddle along with GNOME for a number of years. Lots of little daily annoyances especially around the file management windows, multiple screens, audio configuration, etc. I prefer focus-follows-mouse, which required some kind of add-on plus changing a hidden setting somewhere and it still never worked properly. Switched to KDE two years ago and ALL of those things just worked out of the box. And everything else, is easy to customize without jumping through any hoops.

Yes, KDE6 surprised me in a good way. I still prefer the other desktops, but I know I can use KDE just fine.

I believe it was the KDE4 release that went down in history as being horribly buggy.

KDE 4 was pretty bad and we had to use it via Whonix for years.

> Just my thoughts—your mileage may vary. Curious if anyone else feels the same way?

I sure do. The default MacOS interface, to me, feels like it's for children. It's too much work to use it for serious work.

These days I've settled on AwesomeWM. I've been slowly building my ideal desktop since the pandemic. It's super lightweight and completely, completely customizable. I can add code in to do whatever I want pretty much anywhere and it is setup to make that super easy to do so. It's a true joy.

I have a super lightweight, efficient and attractive version of the way I have my Windows desktop setup, except there I have to use a bunch of add-ons that take up memory to achieve the same result. Things liek adding a titlebar button to be on top or to send to a different screen with just a click, or to have a quake style terminal dropdown.

I also think the taskbar showing only icons is confusing when we have the same app opened multiple time. I have a similar organization as you for work: a Firefox window on desktop 10 for Calendar, Mail, another on desktop 9 for company Chat, another (main) window on desktop 1, another on desktop 2 for a different project, ... By default on Gnome they would be all grouped into 1 Firefox icon. We can change the settings to not group apps, but a bunch of Firefox icons next to each others doesn't help either.

I recently discovered in the Fluxbox edition of MX Linux the taskbar Tint2. It was configured in a way that split the taskbar into dedicated and fixed workspace areas. It's an efficient way to see quickly what app is on which desktop, and clicking on one app will bring me to the desktop where the app is. I can also move apps to different desktop with the mouse by dragging them in the bar (for instance drag terminal of desktop 2 in desktop 3 next to the file browser opened there).

It looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/FGNfL7e

I currently use this taskbar with Openbox, but it should work with other DE/WMs. It has some bugs in some edge-cases so it's not perfect, but I like the concept.

I went on a quest to configure the same behavior on different DEs. I couldn't reproduce it with the default bars of Budgie, Cinamon, Gnome, Mate. KDE was the only one where I was close to achieve this. In the default KDE bar, it's possible to sort the apps by their workspaces. But it only sorts them, it doesn't split clearly by static desktops like you can do in Tint2. Still, KDE showed once again it was one of the most customizable :)

What I understand is that people that use multiple desktops they do because they might have 2 apps not fully maximized in desktop 1, another 3 in desktop 2, etc. But for me, I have maximized maximized apps 99.9% of the time, so I can not see and advantage on alt-tab to another app vs shift-alt-tab (or whatever the option) to switch desktops. Or am I missing somthing here?

For me, a desktop is a logical group of programs for something I'm working on, not necessarily a specific layout of non-maximized programs. This also allows for less pollution of programs when Alt+Tabbing, which you might benefit from.

In the desktop-centric organization, many people also have 1 app per workspace most of the time (I think). In a tiling WM, the app will take the full screen estate if it's alone there, so it's also maximized.

The difference with alt+tab is that switching to another workspace (which represents a window if the workspace has only one app) is deterministic, given the right keybindings setup and if we have some habits regarding the placing of windows.

So 99% of the time I have the same placement of windows in workspaces. At the very least my main Firefox on destkop 1, Code Editor on desktop 2, a terminal (related to my coding task) on desktop 3, and then things get more "dynamic", maybe some extra term or other stuff I may need for my task on desktop 4, 5, ... With the bindings Super+<number> (number row on top of the keyboard), I jump directly to my workspaces(windows). With my left hand I hit Super+1 and it will always show Firefox, Super+2 vim, etc...

I prefer it to cycling through alt+tab, hitting Tab multiple times until I find my window. Here's an example of a flow I was doing just earlier today:

win+2 (editor) : I edit code

win+3 (term1) : run command to build or run tests or deploy...

win+1 (firefox) : refresh the app I just built, click somewhere, test...

win+3 (term1) : see that the build actually failed

win+4 (term2) : check a quick solution in another term, use a CLI tool, do some tests in a repl...

win+2 (editor) : fix code

win+3 (term1) : build

win+1 (firefox) : refresh, prepare the page (input some text or something, ready to click a button)

win+3 (term1) : check if build finished

win+1 (firefox) : click the page button to test my change

The idea is that each time I switch to a different desktop/window, I just go there directly, without thinking, as I know where they are. The example I gave is the natural way I use my computer (with i3 or dwm, but can be configured with KDE, Cinamon...), so it's not a far fetched example at all (in my case). Switching back and forth is extremely fast that way. A long time ago, a colleague even told me I was a bit hard to follow when in pair programming sessions so now I try to slow down a bit. With Alt+Tab it's not as smooth, as we'd have to cycle through 4 windows. With the default implementation of most alt+tab out there, it's the opposite of deterministic, there's some logic (that I never fully understood) to go back to the windows in the order of last used/focused windows. But I know that in KDE at least it's possible to configure the behavior of alt+tab to make it loop in a "dumb" predictive way (1->2->3->4->1->2...), so in the end, it's again just a matter of personal preference.

If the bindings were less optimized (shift+alt+<number> or something) it would get uncomfortable to use. I use the Super modifier ("Windows logo" key) as the basis for all shortcuts related to my WM, so it doesn't conflict with the shortcuts reserved by the apps themselves (apps may interpret the modifiers Alt, Option, Shift, but not Super). It's a bit of finger-stretching to reach desktops higher than 5 on the number row, and at some point I need my right hand, but it works fine for me.

You're also correct that workspaces allow for more windows (very useful the 1% of the time I need it), and in that regard a workspaces organization is not comparable to a alt+tab based flow.

Organisation. Personal windows on one desktop,work ones on another, for example.

> Why? It comes down to how I manage my work. I often set up one browser window per project or topic, labeled accordingly (e.g., Project1, Project2). I even have a window called MAIN for my daily essentials like Mail, Calendar, WhatsApp, and Signal.

This is very similar to my workflow in some ways and I was just talking to another developer about this. I keep most of my projects on separate workspaces. I feel very confident in my ability to leave each workspace in whatever state I need. I'm on an AMD system running an open stack of GPU drivers, which means if I want I can pop open a new workspace and play a run of Darkest Dungeon if needed and leave that running on the workspace too.