This doesn’t directly answer the OP’s question, but on the subject of Linux DEs, I always despised Gnome-shell, even more than Unity, which I also abhor with the burning fires of a thousand suns.
But Gnome-shell has come a long way since its debut, and it can now be extensively customized via extensions. I use dash-to-panel to get a win7-style taskbar and gno-menu to get a win7-style start menu and it all feels really familiar. If you prefer a MacOS-style dock, dash-to-dock will do that too.
Gnome’s design philosophy used to be “do it our way, and if you don’t like it go elsewhere”. But now they allow users to customize it via extensions, and it’s great.
If you just want Luma in linux theres literally 7billion themes to get the look and functionality of Luma. Theres even a halfassed port of it, though I don’t know why the hell you want to use it so bad in linux its workflow is fucking awful.
+1 for Cinnamon. I absolutely love it. Customisable, but retains the sort of Windows-style menu bar with “system tray” style applets and things. I think it is the best UI for staying close to the windows-style start bar.
What you described in your detailed post is basically cinnamon DE with the nemo file manager. What comes by default in linux Mint…So you can definitely try that out and you will be covered…
BUT KDE pretty much gives you endless customization. Meaning that you can make it as you want. If @anon5644329 ´s instructions pretty much cover your needs the experience by trying out cinnamon will not be much different.
Lastly i will give the same advice as @Eden . Do not try to use linux like windows. They are different things with different conventions and the moment you start learning a few of the things that linux allows you to do you might find that the typical windows-like DE might not cover you any more. Every DE is designed the way it is for a reason and is it important to understand why it is made like this before you assess if it covers your needs or not. When trying sth new you need an open mind. Otherwise you miss a lot.
Linux works fine like windows. MATE, XFCE, KDE, and Mint/Cinnamon all basically work like Windows with a taskbar and start menu.
Gnome-shell substantially diverged from that, and some people really enjoyed the change. Same with Unity to a lesser extent. That’s fine. I hated both of them and just basically want a taskbar and start menu and you know, leave me alone so I can get work done already.
That’s the mistake they made, they decided to turn Gnome on it’s head and break everything, change everything, and still call it ‘Gnome’. It should have had a unique name as it is completely different to Gnome 2 in every way
Ya it’s pretty silly the way they did it. I don’t know if there’s something going on behind the scenes that made it simpler this way, or they just didn’t want to lose the name recognition, but it’s dumb.
I will say that I love the new GNOME though, especially how Solus looks out-of-the-box… mmmmmm.
Their real mistake wasn’t changing the desktop paradigm. It wasn’t even making that new workflow the default. Their mistake was pure unfiltered arrogance, which still persists to a lesser extent. The core Gnome team has a distinct vision and if you didn’t like it you could basically go screw yourself. They deliberately remove options from their software, repeating the mantra of “the best defaults”, all in the name of simplicity.
These days, you can customize Gnome shell to your liking with extensions. But the project owners remain arrogant and frequently remove features a substantial minority of their users use, like desktop icons from Nautilus. Don’t like it? That’s your problem, use something else or figure out a solution on your own.
The nice thing about KDE is that if you don’t want it to look like windows 10 you can make it look like literally anything. I have a sort of unity-like desktop with actually good theming. Also you can actually use addons because they aren’t broken with every update.
