As a long time desktop *nix user, I have no idea how any one works without multiple workspaces. For me it's second nature to me to switch to another workspace to start a new kind of task.
Multiple workspaces is such a brilliantly simple concept I am surprised it took so long for it to be adopted into OS X. Sadly (for OS X users) Spaces is pretty poorly done compared to how multiple workspaces generally work in Gnome or KDE.
Really? In Spaces, I can grab a window with my trackpad and then hit my hotkey to go to the next space. In Gnome on Ubuntu, I have to right-click and hit "move to workspace", and in apps with nonstandard widgets (read: Chrome), even that doesn't work and I have to go down to the taskbar to do that.
You can do this in most desktop managers for Linux as well, where Spaces fails is how each workspace in managed. In Gnome each workspace acts almost like a new lite session, for example only the applications in the current workspace show up in my task bar (this is optional by the way) and when I alt+tab then only the applications on the current workspace are tabbed through. This works very well because when I switch between different task (say photo editing and programming) I don't want to generally think about what other non-related task/applications are running on my system. In Spaces every workspace is part of a kind of global workspace and there is no hiding of task environments.
The different environments all have their own shortcuts, but you can definitely customize things. Might I suggest awesomewm? It takes about two days of reference back to the man page (keep it up in its own tag ;) ) but after that you generally have the hang of it, and it has far more advanced features for workspaces/tags than the other players, at least the floating WMs.
I've never really liked Gnome much, you might want to try some of the other DEs out there, especially since Gnome is pushing a whole new interface in a few months so you'll have to learn new stuff anyway.
I think it took so long to be implemented in OS X because it's actually not a big benefit when you have a nice windowing system with drag and drop that works everywhere (in fact the benefits of drag and drop are significantly reduced by using virtual screens and the benefit is -- for most users -- outweighed by the cost).
You're the first person I've heard describe OS X as having a "nice windowing system". OS X has many good traits, but I've always thought of the WM as being rather poorly done. As far as I can tell it lacks proper maximization, horizontal/vertical maximization, snapping, mousefocus, intelligent raise behavior, tiling, tabbing, omnipresence, pin-to-top, pin-to-background, keyboard move-resize, and meta-key drag+resize. Not to mention configurable bindings for any of these.
Now there's single-app mode, which I take as a tacit acknowledgement that real maximization instead of "zoom" was a good idea after all. How long did that take, again?
I reallyreally want to like OS X. It does so many things right (focus-stealing, DnD, and copy-paste among them!) It's just so painful to use after having a real WM.
[edit] For reference, I use Openbox; the listed features (except for tiling/tabbing) are what I use everyday. I expect the awesome/ratpoison crowd has slightly different but no less valid criticisms.
Expose is really really good. The biggest problem with Spaces is that it doesn't 'play nice' with Expose.
The maximising the Window thing is a tacit acknowledgement that you're not actually using the full potential of your desktop as a multi-application environment. :-P
If you want to bash a Windowing system that truly deserves it, bash the one from Windows! OS X isn't perfect, but Windows is really really bad. Except for Windows 7, which made big improvements (aka copying OS X) and is now merely really bad.
Are you confusing Windowing System with Window Manager?
I'll give you that Linux has a few better WMs than OS X. (I'm particularly fond of Openbox myself, and was always excited about the elusive 'Enlightenment e17'.)
However, I cannot accept any claim that X is better than Quartz.
> Are you confusing Windowing System with Window Manager?
His comment is fair considering the parent comment was confusing about why it took so long to get spaces (an aspect of window management) because of elements of the windowing system.
YMMV. There are two features that I'm missing from the *nix implementations i've seen, which work great in Spaces. One is the ability to find a window across multiple desktops (spaces+exposé ) and the other is the ability to assign a default space for different applications
