People don't seem to remember, but the finder used to be spatial. You'd open a folder, and a new window would pop up atop your old one.

We can still do this, but thankfully the ui paradigm seems to have advanced to the point that it assumes users don't need to see a stack of every directory they opened. And if they do, Miller columns are superior anyway

i wish miller columns were more popular. i did a search for linux. there are a few minor in development or abandoned file managers that have them. dolphin dropped them in 2012 because they were not used enough and to much work to maintain for the devs at the time. nautilus discussed and rejected them. interestingly i found a recent inofficial patch for nautilus, and dolphin is officially working on bringing them back. that's maybe even going to get me involved to test once i figure out how to build dolphin from source.