an app launcher. Literally every other desktop on the planet has one, how this isn't considered basic functionality is beyond me. Give your grandparents a vanilla GNOME computer and tell them to get to Facebook and you will see how necessary this is. Default should be dash-to-dock with intelligent autohide so you only see it when you need it. This would fulfill GNOME's hangups about it while also improving usability, so I fail to see a downside.

Gnome has one. You tap the super key for the dock, then again for the full app list. I see thiscoomplaint all the time, and it confuses me every time.

"I don't like the default app launcher" or "I'd prefer an always visible dock" fine, but Gnome doesn't have one? What?

tray icons. GNOME treats background processes like bugs to be squashed. Let's just get real here for a second: sometimes you want programs to run in the background and sometimes you want to be able to see what they are doing in real time. I want my email clients to tell me when I get emails, I wan't my Nextcloud to tell me when there are sync issues, and I want Discord to tell me if I get DMs. This should be considered basic functionality.

I both agree and disagree with this. Gnome is trying to make a unified system for this sort of thing, and that's admirable, but until it works, we kinda need a notification tray.