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> I'm assuming displays have detectable ids of some sort?

Yes, the EDID information uniquely identifies a screen. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Display_Identificat...

> Why can't linux do this?

It does for me (fedora, gnome, wayland). Other stacks are more work. I was put off using Sway as my desktop, because screen resolutions and layouts was manual.

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It gets better. One of my ASUS monitors has a defect (it kicked in after several years of use) where it no longer provides EDID information. I believe that on windows and macOS this would effectively be the end-of-life for the monitor, which is a shame since in every other way it is still 100% functional. On Linux, I was able to tell the kernel to use a file for the EDID information, and created the file using the other (identical) monitor.

Very much a corner case, but also another perfectly good monitor kept out of a landfill.

Windows may actually let you override the EDID info, it's been a while since I used windows but I think it lets you do it in device manager... from the era when displays came with drivers on a cdrom.

There are also EDID cloner/emulator hardware solutions that you plug in inline on the display cable.

Kanshi is the default solution when you need dynamic monitor management in Sway: https://sr.ht/~emersion/kanshi/

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