@ lah7 - I have never used the 2 panel layout. I have 2 monitors, with 1 transparent panel each, 26 pixels and 20 pixels height respectively. One has the Brisk menu, which I use only when something is running in full screen mode (usually VLC) on the other monitor. I have tweaked the preferences to remove items from System, and show the Favorites by default, but I cannot change what apps are favorites. If I could choose my own favorites the Brisk menu would work for me. I keep all frequently used apps in my main panel anyway. I use the menu only for the less often used apps—I would place those in Favorites.
I have restored the Places menu in Traditional because the desktop does not show any icons any more, but it does not show my Samba mounts by default. I don’t know how to tweak that, but I can add bookmarks in Caja and they will show up. I don’t want it to show me my other drive which has Windows on it. I can turn off auto mount in Disks. Right click on desktop is dead, but I only used it to change the wallpaper, and I only do that once every several weeks, so it’s not a deal breaker.
Fingerprint authentication does not work in 18.04. I miss that because of how often I have to sudo in terminal, or graphical.
Having multiple workspaces is the main ‘hook’ that keeps me in Linux. When I do switch over to Windows I look for it, and then, “oh, that’s right, I can’t do that in Windows” — it’s the only ‘hook’ right now. Compiz is nice but it’s broken anyway in 18.04. Luckily my 2 Wine apps work reliably. If either of those breaks I’m back to Windows full time.