MacOS is the best model for a successful desktop Linux to use. Trim down the kernel/drivers to just what runs on that spec hardware, only support that spec hardware, focus effort on the OS and ecosystem, keep it stable, make upgrades trivial, and give it freedom to run other software, terminal apps, etc. And most of all- focus resources on these efforts and charge a lot of money for it!
I have way more stability issues and complicated upgrades on Windows.
and KDE was always ATLEAST as easy as windows, arguably more. At this time lots of older crappy hardware people had also only had win98 drivers, giving people immense problems. It mostly worked better on linux. This still goes today.
(in comparison with the state of Windows at the time, of course)
Rectangle/tiling window managers on top is the only way to make it workable.
Apart from wm, the existence of application notarization is a downright insult (though Windows is also guilty of this with smartscreen but to a much lesser extent).
Apple's "pay us 100 bucks a year or we'll tell your users that your program is malware" is just another step in the inevitable game of locking down macos and turning it into a mobile-like hellscape
Application notarization isn’t a problem anymore- you just have a single accept dialog. That problem that made you do a trick to get past it was only a problem years ago, due to whomever the moron was that thought that was a good idea. The current way is acceptable.
I install homebrew and random apps with no problems.