Comment by epistasis

I tried Aerospace but the default was to map all alt keys to 26 different workspaces, eradicating all the built in emacs-like key shortcuts available in every app.

That plus there's zero tutorial on the basic key mapping, just a bunch commands and no hints about where to look for how to use it...

It is the most hostile piece of software I have encountered in years and I just spend the past few weeks mucking with sway and hyprland on Linux, and mucking in Linux bootloaders so that I can enter the disk encryption password both by serial port and the physical keyboard.

So I solved it by deleting aerospace and waiting to try a different rolling window manager, which will be Rift. I suspect in the end I'll just write my own tiling window manager. It certainly seems like there's one for every person who has ever had the whim to do so...