you can do this on debian, too. It's not specific to the OS -- it's the window manager. Specifically, this kind of window manager is called a tiling window manager.

Basically it just organizes your windows slightly differently. Instead of having them floating around like in Windows, Mac, or traditional desktop environments like GNOME, it tiles them -- when you open a new window, it automatically split screens it.

window managers also don't by default have things like a battery display or a wi-fi applet, like your typical desktop environment does -- you have to do that stuff manually by building some sort of status bar (there are various apps that provide status bars).

This is my config for sway. I've written it in an Emacs org mode document which Emacs exports to the correct location. This could be helpful for you as it is clearly cut up into sections and makes configuring sway a little simpler to understand. I haven't updated the information in the tables for every change I've made (should really get around to that), but save that I hope it can be helpful.

I too like the bar font a lot.