Long time Linux user and also long time macos user. I've never had any problems getting "basic things done" on either platform. Except for Linux, which has inferior applications for most things.
(I'm also a big fan of the hardware. 2019 macbook has been the best laptop I've owned so far)
In terms of fighting the OS, I don't know where that comes from.
Anything cli you generally use sudo, anything else you open the security settings and tick some boxes. I don't even have to type my password, I just touch the finger print reader. Then the program works forever. (I have a keybinding to open security settings too, so it only takes maybe 5 seconds most of the time)
I honestly don't know what people are fighting, unless they just really hate clicking through a few menus.
One key piece of advice I follow is NEVER update to the latest new OS version. Almost every person I know does and they run into crazy issues that shouldn't even be problems. I'm not going to be your free QA engineer, Apple.
My assumption here is that, as usual, Apple doesn't care about anyone who hasn't fully bought into their ecosystem. If it's not an iDevice, they don't care if it works fully with their desktop OS.
The primary things that I am struggling with are the keybindings and loss of true fluxbox sloppy focus. zsh and the BSD tools take a little getting used to (different ps, grep, sed, etc?), but are quite serviceable.
But lordy, do I wish I could hit windows-A at any time and instantly get a new terminal, as I've been doing for twenty years. How do y'all Mac people live? ;).
You can create your own macOS native workflows with Automator and launch them with macOS keyboard shortcuts. It's all built right in.
You could rebind select if you wanted, I wouldn't really suggest doing that though. The command key sends the same key-code as the windows key, but it's not on the same place on the keyboard.
If you're on a Mac keyboard, the muscle memory should map to Option+a. Which by default types å.
If you're using a PC keyboard with your Mac, and you're not already used to it… you might want to look at 'System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys...' so that your setup either:
1. Puts the modifier keys where they are on Mac keyboards, by setting Option->Command, and Command->Option.
2. Puts most shortcuts where they are on PC keyboards, by setting Control->Command.
That said, on macOS there is a preference pane in which you can rebind almost all shortcuts, and add shortcuts for things that don’t have them, and it works OS-wide without fuss. In particular you can add shortcuts to services (which is something you probably want to look into), and you can set Automator workflows as services. I haven’t seen anything quite like that on Linux.