It rarely affects me. I'd say 99% of my time in Gnome is spent in either Firefox or terminal.
Suddenly I'll need a program so I hit windows key, type in the start of the program name, and smash the Enter key. It's super simple. What's the problem?
Suddenly I'll need a program so I hit windows key, type in the start of the program name, and smash the Enter key. It's super simple. What's the problem?
For example, say you're doing something (eg programming) that requires both the browser and the terminal. While you're at that, you want to do something that also requires both the browser and terminal (eg checking something in a terminal-based todo app to reply something to your coworkers in a web based chat app). Assuming you leave these things open, you now have to do 2 switches (app switch+tab/window switch) to get to whatever you're looking for in the worst case, 1.5 switches on average.
Talking about switching between programs, yes I thought that was a bit weird in the beginning but it came up so rarely that I eventually learned the habit of using alt+§ (on swedish layout). It's not so bad since the key is right above Tab.