it all pretty much follows the same Windows standards
This is why I don't use Linux on the desktop. (About half of my servers are Linux.)
Every couple of years I'll bring out my old HP laptop and spend most of a week installing all the newest desktop environments to see how they've progressed. I'm always disappointed.
I've been counting on Linux to be the big disruptor for two decades now. But more and more it's just becoming the poor man's Windows, by aping Windows conventions.
If I want Windows, I'll run Windows. If I want macOS, I'll run macOS. What I want is something different, not something that tries to be a watered-down version of both.
There are so many possible graphical environments on Linux. Gnome for all its faults isn't really windows lite. KDE has a LOT more functionality built in than windows is liable to just with kwin. With KDE + compiz + plugins the amount of functionality explodes, if you enable the close animation where all windows break into pieces and fly off screen literally.
In 2009ish I had a ui where you could zoom out to a giant wall and rearrange all the windows on your virtual desktops and use a macish expose to bound to a mouse key to pick from the windows on the current desktop. The visual metaphor was better than macs and windows and to boot there were so many knobs you could tweak virtually anything.
Tiling window managers like i3wm and 17 more are both minimal and powerful. Notably i3 has MUCH more powerful keybindings and treats individual monitors as virtual desktops.
With xmonad your window manager is a haskell program with awesome a lua one.
If you want to go all in on emacs you can make it your window manager too.
Honestly its only windows lite if you want it to be so and really everyone is basically xerox lite to some degree or another because we are basically using the same basic metaphors described therein.
This is why I don't use Linux on the desktop. (About half of my servers are Linux.)
Every couple of years I'll bring out my old HP laptop and spend most of a week installing all the newest desktop environments to see how they've progressed. I'm always disappointed.
I've been counting on Linux to be the big disruptor for two decades now. But more and more it's just becoming the poor man's Windows, by aping Windows conventions.
If I want Windows, I'll run Windows. If I want macOS, I'll run macOS. What I want is something different, not something that tries to be a watered-down version of both.