I didn’t say at all that there is no terminal on Windows or macOS. I was just pointing out that there are many more options for operating and maintaining the system in the command prompt on Linux than in the case of Windows. On MacOS, you can use the terminal for a bit more purposes, since it is Unix-based. So you can do a lot more in an open source operating system than in a closed source operating system. The command line, on the other hand, is a tool with which you can shut down the machine in the Linux operating system, update packages, the kernel, etc. etc.
You can also do those things from the command line in Windows and macOS, those systems are also built to run as a server. You cannot really install a custom kernel there as you can in Linux, although that is less important on those systems as they provide a stable driver API, which the Linux kernel does not.
By comparison, things like GNOME will always be more “customizable” if you consider editing the source code to be customization…
To be clear, I think GNOME’s goal is to provide desktop UX for the general user, not the average Linux user. So some (old) things are not exposed to users. Besides, the cases you mentioned are not of general use: they are of rare use.
As I said in a previous comment, mentioning what you want and what you want to achieve would be more constructive than comparing poorly to other OS/desktop environments or relying on heuristics that are no longer valid (i.e. the pseudo link between linux and customization).
The whole free software world, and Linux in it, is about the fact that you can pass on and use the source codes freely.
I agree with you that modern desktop Linux distributions are increasingly moving towards simplicity. However, those who use Linux must have a slightly different approach and knowledge than those who use Windows. In Windows you get almost everything ready, in Linux you have more freedom to customize it according to your needs.
Sure, if you are a developer and you edit the source code, or you hire developers to do it for you, then you can do anything you want. If you don’t do that, then your approach is pretty much the same as Windows. And even for developers, there are problems with expecting more “customization” or “choice” to be a solution to anything instead of a cause of more problems, for that you can refer to this page: http://www.islinuxaboutchoice.com/
Yes, since at least 2010 it has been going on to make desktop Linux distributions similar to Windows, to introduce next-next finish installations, etc. At the same time, the share of desktop Linux does not increase significantly.
I am not sure what you are referring to in the year 2010. AFAIK Linux distributions have been attempting to clone Windows since the 90s. Windows was still the most popular all along so perhaps we can say that source code availability has very little relationship with desktop usage share.
Obviously, because Linux initially communicated with the user through a terminal, similar to Unix. In the world of software, copying and the use of ideas flow back and forth, similarly to composing music. And the idea of virtual desktops was just the other way around, they tried to transfer it from the Linux GUI to Windows.
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