It's not the same to dumping some package manager on top of an OS (like apt on bash) to having it be part of the core OS.
When a package manager is part of the core OS, it handles ALL installed apps, and can update, or remove anything.
apt on bash won't update my firefox, or let me uninstall apps. Stuff will make it in sideways, and won't be tracked by any package manager.
> Windows has one of the best window managers around and you can make it do pretty much anything you want.
Like I said, there's a strong matter of preference, but what can objectively be said is that ONE window manager isn't enough for everybody, and everybody want something different. That's why you have different WMs on Linux.
Also, Windows' WM (whatever it's called) can't do any of the stuff i3wm does, so you're just exagerating.
> Obviously millions of users and devs use the Windows filesystem to great success.
Users don't count, because they barely interact with it. And when they do, they have to follow guides, because they can't understand it. Go ahead. Ask any windows user where specific stuff is stored.
> Imagine a filesystem where you don't spread one single application's files around to 10 different locations which differ based on the target distro...that's Windows.
Why is that a good thing? If you want to know how owns a file, we have package managers to track that.