It is nice people are discussing this matter politely and seriously. I always found one dock/panel being the best for me, in Openbox, former Gnome, XFCE and in Windows. I liked, and still like Unity for its beauty and the abilities of the launcher etc, even though I couldn’t get the top panel to hide. But, the top panel had a job to do, other than carrying a clock. It also carried a lot of usefull stuff, indicators on the right side.
I agree with you that minimise is not a die to have an option. But good to have. It is there in Windows 10 too, and by swiping from the left of the screen the “overview” appears and one can choose between open apps/files. Not only that, you can open last week’s apps/files/folders and so on.
All right, if there’s no other way than use Gnome shell as the default, the Unity experience could be continued, but something in-house should be found, so Ubuntu look would be unique. At that time half way in 17.10, there was not much time, but now.
Anyway, is the screeny below Ubuntu or not? Themes, icons had been changed. The browser is Web. The theme is Adwaita.
