I wouldn't call tabs a usability horror show with the reason you stated. Surely you can just drag a tab off the tab line and then you have it in its own window. Ready for you position however you want, in the full control of the window manager.
It's so easy to separate tabs into their own window and utilise the window managers control.
Unless you explicitly enable separate tasbar buttons in Windows you still have all of your browser windows accessible only through a single 32px-wide button on your screen. And the default thumbnail preview delay is also equally frustrating.
You still lose out on multiple features of the OS for Window management when you simply create more windows within an App. I addressed that here if you're interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14355971
It's so easy to separate tabs into their own window and utilise the window managers control.