I switched to Linux a while ago because I was annoyed at Apple for a number of reasons so I'm not exactly an Apple fanboy. However regarding your 1) there is one thing I'm sorely missing and that's QuickLook. No matter what finder view you are in, if you are in a folder with pictures (or even Word documents) you can press the space bar to see an almost full screen preview. Arrows for navigation work as they would if the preview is not open, so if you have ordered by date modified instead of name you will browse the pictures in that order. I have yet to find something in Linux that can do that (even just for pictures).