@LinuxLounge I've decided that I'm not going to fight it, but I sure as hell am going to tweak the fuck out of the GUI to make it look better.
@sprocket Looks like you can configure it to be almost the same, apart from the pointless other menu bar above the menu bar which can't be removed.
The most unfathomable change to me is no menu bar by default and the very-hard-to-use (so many 'clicks', shitty animations) "hamburger" menu is missing almost everything. As a drag-to-select menu user this is just not a menu bar but some other contraption.