Email is a just such a communication medium. It requires both prose at length, and also quick response. Even though the type of information passed around is usually binary: OK/NOT OK, or a status update.
Gmail offers a way to reduce the "prose at length" to a few buttons. And it adds the pleasantries for you.
You can think of it as a workflow automation tool. Your email chains are tickets and you're moving them through different statuses.
Notwithstanding, personal/intimate email is different and spending time writing a beautiful letter is a thing of its own.
Using linux has slight advantages only for devops, and even then why would they need it if they can spin up an ec2/run a docker container/use vagrant. Mac OS offers superior UX to linux (unless you invest heaps of engineering hours into setting it up your window manager & env to a usable state). More modern distributions like Mint or Elementary OS might offer somethnig on par, but even then the simplicity and ubiquity of Macs fade their benefits.
The only reason to use Linux is for extra op security, but that's not what programmers main concern usually is.
Gmail offers a way to reduce the "prose at length" to a few buttons. And it adds the pleasantries for you.
You can think of it as a workflow automation tool. Your email chains are tickets and you're moving them through different statuses.
Notwithstanding, personal/intimate email is different and spending time writing a beautiful letter is a thing of its own.