WSL2, power toys and hands down the best window management of any OS, I hate working on my MBP just due to the difficulty of managing different windows and aligning them on the same desktop.
There used to be a 'tile windows' since windows 2.0 or something like that, but it did just that, splatted the windows to take up all the space.
One thing I like about X11 and Windows doesn't do it, is alt-dragging from anywhere in the window, last time I used Windows you couldn't move things around by holding alt and left clicking anywhere, you could only do that from the title bar, which means you can't slide the top of the window off the screen.
The other major thing for me is selection copy, if you highlight text, you can't middle mouse button to paste it, you have to ctrl-c first, which is just more steps.
You can use "move" in the system menu. Once activated, the arrow keys in the keyboard will move the window outside the desktop window, not sure if you can do it using the mouse somehow.
With XFCE though, I'm quite happy with the level of focus stealing, things that seem to be justifiable are at the right level, like authentication prompts.
Out of interest, what are the things that take focus for you? Maybe we're running totally different sets of programs which might give me an impression that isn't warranted.
I've not noticed focus stealing outside of Steam. What is steam made from, it seems very browserish.
This topic is causing some self-reflection and wonder if I am the peculiar one who does different things and just not bumping into it, I mainly work from xterm, screen, mutt, vim and a lot of time in firefox. Perhaps this combination just doesn't start things that request focus, but when in MS Windows I noticed it a lot.
You're right about steam, but now I'm on a path of wondering...
This topic confirms that focus stealing is a thing in XFCE, I have some research to do!
I am baffled as to how that has been allowed to go on so long. It makes Office a trainwreck usability wise.
The two things that trip me up are that you able to move windows to a position that you can't move them away anymore.
And that apparently maximized windows sometimes leave a 10px gap at the top so that you click on the window behind :-/
In case you hadn't come across it yet, there's a third-party piece of software called AltDrag [0] that lets you do it. It's kind of a must have for me whenever I have to use windows. Yes this should just be builtin
Development on Spectacle ceased[1] and it looks like the community may have rallied around an open-source program called Rectangle, which is open source. At least, judging from this single Reddit thread lol:
https://www.reddit.com/r/osx/comments/kazpcn/spectacle_alter...
[1] Although when I search for it now, I see an update from 2023 on softonic? Although the original dev's github repo for it hasn't been updated in years. https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle
(PowerToys doesn’t do this by itself, you have to select every window in place if I’m not mistaken.)
As just one example—the dock is atrocious for a browser-centric workflow. I only ever have 2 "apps" open at a time, but I have 6 Firefox windows and 2 IDE windows, and remembering where I put a specific window (or even that I already have it open!) is a chronic problem. I know about right-click to show all, but the text that pops up is small (it's a context menu, not a first-class navigation element) and that doesn't help with the discoverability problem.
I'm sure that there are other apps to patch the other aspects of the system that irritate me, but if you have to install 4 third party tools to get something close to how good Windows is out of the box then I'd say OP has a good point.
Also you seem to be ignorant of a lot of features of macOS, like cmd-tab, focus an app, cmd-up arrow to show the windows of the app, and so forth. Or swipe down from the trackpad on a Dock icon to show the windows of the app.
Anyway, YMMV as always. Personally I find the window management atrocious not because of the way it was designed, which definitely works for me (and I hate the Windows’ one), but because of the bugs which they insist on never ever fixing…
It's not that I'm ignorant of these, it's that they're clunky for a browser centric workflow. The abstraction of an "app" is just plain wrong for the way that I and many others use computers these days, because one app (the browser) is home to most of the tasks I'm working on and already has its own second-level navigation in the form of tabs. The "app" layer means on Mac there are three levels of navigation to get to what I'm trying to do, which is too many.
What makes Windows (and most Linux DEs) better for the browser-centric world is that windows themselves are first class citizens—I don't have to pass through Firefox to get to GitHub.
This happens every time I unplug my laptop from external monitors, or plug it in to external monitors (even if they’re the exact same model and configuration as other monitors I’ve previously used). It’s aggravating and distracts me from what I’m trying to do.
Whereas I never have any issues on OSX, always find my windows where I expect them to be, and spend a lot less time moving and rearranging them.
The two operating systems do have different approaches to window management and to me it sounds like you simply prefer Windows, whereas I prefer OSX.
Of all the languages I speak, German is the more chaotic language by far. But most native Germans consider it the best/easiest.
For me the Windows management of Windows is horrible, but I spent like 90% of my time in Linux were I was young, even using things like "screen" that uses the command line and shortcuts to be the most efficient thing I have ever used (while requiring learning the shortcuts before becoming productive).
Today I use Mac like 95% of my time, control Linux machines with it and use Windows when the force of circumstance obliges me the 5%.
My conclusion is that usability is mostly about getting used to how things work and a tiny bit of customisation. There are no significant usability differences between operating systems.
The _only_ thing that I have never gotten used to and that keeps slowing me down is that app switching (Cmd+Tab) in macOS is MRU while switching windows (Cmd+`, Cmd+Shift+`) within apps is circular.
I'm finding it impossible to remember whether I have to go forward or backward to get back to the window I'm looking for within an app.
I consider my native language to be chaotic and hard to learn. Not all things are subjective, some things can be objectively compared.
Meanwhile on KDE I have an easy option to swap caps lock and ctrl, without having to install some weird .exe file off github.
Two anecdotes: starting Windows Terminal by clicking an icon in the taskbar (W10) creates a window that's not focused. W11 does away with the alt-space keyboard shortcut to open the window operations menu.
Huh? You can't even snap windows to screen edges.