I am not surprised. I've been using Linux for a while, and there a lot of things I miss. I keep an old Mac around to reminisce.
• menu bar: one, at the top of the screen. I think KDE had this, and there might have been a somewhat working extension for GTK that doesn't exist anymore.
• keys: CTRL is mapped to Alt; Alt is mapped to Win. This is a start. ⌘C and ⌘V: work as Copy and Paste in Terminal, ^C and all the other "control" keys work as expected in Terminal. I used to configure Terminal keys using AutoKey. I haven't been able to make ⌘← and ⌘→ work in text boxes - sadly it's hard-coded in X11 to do what Windows does.
• windows: Smarter window positioning and sizing especially with multiple monitors. I miss Zoom: the button that sizes the window to perfectly and minimally fit the content without scroll bars.
• too many additional items to count like ⌥8 to type bullet characters.
This is one of those things that I geek out on as a former macOS user.
> menu bar: one, at the top of the screen. I think KDE had this, and there might have been a somewhat working extension for GTK that doesn't exist anymore.
KDE has this if you use the Window Buttons[1], Window Title[2], and Window AppMenu[3] plugins.
> • keys:
Plasma Desktop lets you remap keys easily, and you can use setxkbmap elsewhere. I haven't tried remapping the ⌘ key for terminal usage, though, but I've remapped most of the macOS shortcuts I used to use.
Maybe you should try out the Ubuntu Budgie distro with my http://kinto.sh project added to handle your key mappings. I've tried countless distros and it is the most mac like experience you will find. EnsoOS would follow it, but of course I'd mention elementaryOS and Pop_OS! if they'd keep support for the global menu like Budgie or EnsoOS(xfce).
Totally agree. Some would point to elementary OS/Pantheon as being that, but it’s only really “maclike” superficially and brings some unique annoyances that don’t exist in macOS.
