The struggle was the behaviour of side-window. It was especially difficult in Doom to control when a new window gets created when you click on the link in backlinks buffer. It might as well be exactly how you like it. Winner Mode probably does not control this part. Try how it works on your end; you might even like what you get. I didn’t (there are one or two long debugging threads where I’m involved in this forum and/or in Slack; like this one). I prefer the way vanilla works.