I really like gnome and how it looks. However every time I try it I find myself in need of more functionality and so I install a bunch of extensions. For example I can’t live without a dock and some sort of system tray that shows which apps are running in background.
Sometimes the extensions have small UI inconsistencies or use more memory than usual. That’s why I totally ditched gnome and switch to KDE.
Also I tend to think it’s been designed for people who are more comfortable using a keyboard. I’m mostly a mouse person.
Do any of you run pure gnome with no extensions? How do you cope with the lack of a dock and system tray?
Innovation doesn’t necessarily mean that all past functionality needs to be carried over. Actually innovation often means that past technology becomes obsolete and gets replaced with something new.
They removed them because with GNOME Shell those icons no longer made sense. There was no longer a concept of dragging apps from a panel menu to a desktop, instead apps were now pinned from the fullscreen app overview to the dash.
Since the code was no longer used by the default GNOME experience, it became unmaintained and eventually got removed.