Let me chime in and give you a hand.

So the total coin supply in infinity time is not really a relevant thing. You think "coins minted forever means unlimited supply" but what's important to understand are the supply increase curves over time. There will never, ever be infinity Monero. Two infinities are not identical, it's the emission curve, the process, because you live in the process, not the end result at infinity years, which doesn't really exist.

There are two main type of non hard capped supply curves. One would be a linear emission, that is, set amount created every block. The second is a geometric emission, that is, percentage of existing supply every block (or time period, annually, say). Central bank fiat initially sold this promise, 2% per year or whatever. But that rule cannot be enforced, can be changed, and of course inevitably will be ignored. It went from 2 to 3 to "we will do what it takes to stabilize the currency" to now whatever they feel like. There's no predictable supply. But you could have a block chain that does have this enforced, I don't know of any that exist today but you could have a continuous emission as a percentage of supply.

So the curves of supply based on these schemes look very different, from each other and from their emission schedules. A 2% a year emission looks flat, but when graphed, shows a sharp compounding increase in coins, devaluing the currency relatively quickly, on the order of 50% every decade and a half, the math with this is the same as compounding interest. No good, it's predictable, that's good, but the devaluation picks up steam quickly and is long term not viable.

A linear emission, that is, a flat amount every block or period or year or whatever as a percentage of supply approach 0 as a limit, and interestingly, the number for debasement per second and per year and per block are the same number always with linear emission, that is, second/block/day/year 1 the supply increase is 100%, period 2 it's 50, period 3 it's 33% and so on, if the same emission exists from the start, Monero didn't start tail emission from day 1, some coins do like Grin.

The rate of decrease as a percentage of supply for a linear emission coin is geometric. The rate of *increase* in supply in a geometric emission scheme is exponential.

These are the traits of these schemes. Two infinities are not alike. So it's not simply capped supply = finite and continuing emission = infinite, the scheme for the continuous supply is what gives the money it's character. What's most important is that it is predictable and algorithmic, beyond that the different schemes give the money different properties. What properties? Well, I've got a write up in my public bookmarks from a few days ago about capped supply coins and their disastrous shortcoming, it begins with a deep breath if you wan to go read it, geometric schemes devalue within decades, linear emission schemes appear to be long term stable, getting you want you think you get with capped supply while solving problems with it, and fiat "do whatever we want with your money" schemes are of course slavery and nothing more.