Even if you can use an alternative file explorer you can’t uninstall the native one, so that’s not really replaceable. And even if you could there’s the DE and the backend for graphics that I mentioned which you most definitely can’t. The fact that people realise that being able to choose a web browser is a good thing but never consider the same of other parts of the system is truly amazing to me.
That’s cool, didn’t knew that was possible,bI guess then that the file formation thing should be moved to the possible but so difficult might as well be impossible category.
Even if the windows store did the same, it’s a closed garden, so you can only update stuff Microsoft has approved, whereas anyone can spawn their own repo of packages for any of the many package managers out there. To give an example I would consider Android to NOT have this ability I described for Linux (at least not to the same extent), because system and apps updates are separated and because the play store is a walled garden that Google controls, and the moment you add F-droid or other alternatives you now have multiple steps to update everything. I agree that Flatpaks and the like are shifting this, but it’s not hard to imagine a package manager that can natively handle those as well just like apt can handle both binary and source packages.
You’re missing the point of being able to fix the system, it’s not about what you are likely to do, is about what you can or can’t do. I agree with you that you’re not likely to do it, and you seem a lot more knowledgeable than me on Windows so I believe that everything you said there is true, but the fact that you’re stopped at the source code on Windows is exactly my point. I saw this a lot when playing around with game engines, Unity’s bugs were annoying and all you could do was report them and wait, on Unreal and Godot you could hop in and find the issue in the code and get a better understanding and possibly fix it, just because the average game programmer won’t do it doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
I know tiling window managers exist for Windows, but in my experience they’re all shit and miss things and are not as well integrated with other stuff such as virtual desktops which is essential. Which is why I put it on the possible but difficult category.
But they’re not flexible enough, afaik (and you seem to know more so please correct me if I’m wrong) you can’t move virtual desktops from one monitor to another or choose whether each monitor should have their own set, or even choose whether you switch virtual desktops on only one or all monitors at a time. Which is why I specified as “that actually work” because the ones that exist work in only one way, so if you’re okay with that great but if not it’s the same as not having them.
Last I used KDE that was the default behaviour, and I’m pretty sure that’s easily configured on the shortcuts section of the system settings app. On the other hand to change these on windows you need to fiddle with regedit and some shortcuts are simply hardcoded so are impossible to change.