MacOS – esc button OS X needs to be released on every command

I would recommend iTerm2 - It's a great terminal app and has this option to bind Left/Right option to meta (or esc+ sequence). Home and End work also as expected.

⌥ + arrow keys will let you navigate by word. As you said, ⌘ + arrow keys will move to the end/beginning of the line or document. Both of these can also be used with ⇧ to select, or the delete key. Furthermore, you can double-click to select a word and triple-click to select a paragraph — and if you double-click-drag or triple-click-drag, you can select multiple words or paragraphs.

Also useful, and perhaps familiar to you coming from Linux:

• ctrl A moves to the beginning of a paragraph
• ctrl E moves to the end of a paragraph
• fn ⌫ deletes forwards (and can be combined with ⌘ or ⌥;
  you can also use ctrlD which doesn't work with the other modifiers)
• ctrl K deletes to the end of the paragraph (kill)
• ctrl Y pastes that text back (yank)
• ctrl L scrolls so the selected text is visible
• ctrl T transposes the two characters next to the cursor
• ctrl O inserts a newline after the cursor

More interesting shortcuts and uses of the keyboard can be found here and elsewhere on the internet.