Agreed. That's why I settled with using the standard theme (Breeze) with some minor panel changes to make the system work a bit like macOS: global menu on top,

Agreed. That's why I settled with using the standard theme (Breeze) with some minor panel changes to make the system work a bit like macOS: global menu on top, small self-hiding dock at the bottom. The whole thing took maybe a couple hours of experimentation two years ago, and I've since been running with the same configuration.