GNOME can look like Windows – and Flashback can do it without extensions

A new GNOME extension called Simple-taskbar does a pretty good job of giving GNOME 50 a taskbar and start menu very much like the ones from Windows 11. It's so new that it's still not listed on the GNOME Extensions website – at the time of writing, it's still under review.

We built it and installed it, and it works. This single extension merges GNOME's built-in panel (across the top of the primary screen) and what it calls the "dash" – the icon bar down the left side – into a single taskbar, styled like Windows 11: icons centered, a Start menu with columns, a search box, and so on.

The handy feature here is to have all this in a single, integrated extension. There are already other extensions to do some of this, such as Dash to Panel, whose development is now sponsored by Zorin OS. It doesn't provide a Start menu replacement, though. For that, you need another extension, such as Arc Menu.

Like many things in Linux, this sort of tool needs the user to do a little manual config. There is also a risk with this kind of DIY GNOME customization using lots of extensions. Extensions are tied to specific versions of the GNOME desktop – so, for instance, the new Simple-taskbar only supports GNOME 50. If you add lots of extensions and then upgrade the underlying OS to a new version, meaning a new version of GNOME, there's a significant chance that the extensions won't work any more – you may even be unable to log in.

Zorin OS takes Ubuntu and does this for you, and the result sells – that's how the company can afford to sponsor extension developers. We rather like Zorin OS as a distro, especially its handy Zorin Appearance accessory, which it showcases on its homepage. If you don't need the customization and just want a Windows 11-like look, last year we looked at AnduinOS, which does this to a stripped-down Ubuntu. At the end of last month, the project released version 2.0, based on Ubuntu 26.04.

Another tactic, of course, is to fork the whole of GNOME and change it to make a whole new, more Windows-like environment. Back in 2011, Linux Mint 12 offered MGSE, a set of Mint GNOME Shell Extensions to make GNOME 3 more Windows-like, but by 2013 that became the Cinnamon desktop. Since its launch in 2011, Mint has also offered the MATE Desktop, a fork and continuation of GNOME 2.

There are multiple ways to keep GNOME but make it look Windows-like. Even the GNOME ecosystem recognizes the need. Early versions of GNOME 3 offered GNOME Fallback mode, intended for machines that didn't support hardware 3D rendering. GNOME dropped that mode with version 3.8, but two alternatives emerged: GNOME Classic, which uses GNOME Shell extensions, and GNOME Flashback, a continuation of the panel-and-Metacity-based Fallback environment.

This is still around and maintained. For instance, Ubuntu 26.04 uses GNOME 50, and includes the packages for GNOME Flashback version 3.58.0. It's installed by default on some distros – in Debian 13 it's a standalone desktop – but on Ubuntu, you must manually install it. You'll probably want to put back the network icon – it's an easy graphical way to manage Wi-Fi connections and so on. All you need is one command:

sudo apt install -y gnome-session-flashback network-manager-gnome

Log out, or reboot, and on the login screen, you can now use the cogwheel button at the bottom right to choose to log in to the new GNOME Flashback session.

By default, Flashback has a GNOME 2 and MATE-style two-panel layout, but if you hold down the Alt key while right-clicking the controls on the panels, you can open a context menu that allows you to move (or remove) them. We moved the Menu Bar control to the beginning of the bottom panel, the Indicator Applet Complete control to the bottom right, and the Show Desktop button to the end, and that's it: a basic classic Windows-style layout.

You can place panels on the left or right screen edge. The snag is that the controls on them don't reorient accordingly, which renders vertical panels unusable. That's completely faithful to GNOME 2 at least. There are some small oddities – you need to use GNOME's session applet to shut down or log out, for example. However, it's usable, and it uses no GNOME extensions at all, so in our testing it's unaffected by OS upgrades. It uses the Metacity window manager: this is an X11 environment, and it will pull in X.Org as a dependency. This does mean it works fine in VMs without 3D acceleration, a more relevant benefit today than its original role of supporting very low-end hardware.

Flashback's appearance varies between releases – the version in Ubuntu 24.04 had a more GNOME-like, softly rounded look. In the current version of GNOME Flashback, it has an old-fashioned 2D look, which we rather like, but it's also much more customizable: it behaves rather like a drastically cut-down Xfce, and MATE users should find it familiar too.

We were surprised but happy to discover the improved customizability in Flashback in GNOME 50. The old GNOME Wiki is coy when it comes to Flashback releases, and doesn't list version 3.58 at all. The banner at the top redirects users to the GNOME handbook instead, but that doesn't contain any mention of Flashback whatsoever.

This is still a desktop based on GNOME. Flashback doesn't magically give apps running under it proper title and menu bars or anything like that – but then neither can any combination of GNOME extensions, and that includes environments built around them such as Zorin OS or AnduinOS. If you want to stay close to the GNOME mainstream in most distros, but want a more traditional desktop, we suggest checking out Flashback.

Room for improvement?

For reconfiguring your desktop quickly to look like existing OS layouts, most distros do have an equivalent to Zorin Appearance – but only if you're using Xfce. This desktop has an optional add-on called Panel Profiles that does the same, although sadly, it doesn't help with plugins such as the Docklike taskbar, Whisker menu, or Xfdashboard.

A KDE version of Xfce's Panel Profiles would be a huge win, and something like it for Flashback would really help too. We don't know if GNOME is accepting contributions to the Flashback session; it seems reluctant to mention Flashback at all in its current documentation. The Flashback GitLab does show that it's in active maintenance, though.

Development of the MATE desktop is slow. It's two and a half years since the last new version. But then the team has an entire codebase to maintain that was abandoned by its own creators. Porting the functionality of MATE over to the GNOME Panel in Flashback, and replacing a few of GNOME's bundled apps with tradition Gtk ones, such as Linux Mint's XApps, would result in a much more familiar and usable desktop with a smaller maintenance burden. It's a possible future for those who remain disenchanted with GNOME Shell. ®