It's not so bad. I installed the Panel Scroll extension so I can easily scroll workspaces without the big ugly squares of Workspace Indicator on my taskbar. Blur My Shell gets rid most of the Gnome dreariness. Tho you can't see what you are typing in the taskbar search box when in light mode. I use Super key search anyway.
Other extensions:
*Gnome Clipboard
*Weather O'Clock
*Shutdown Timer
Poked around with a bunch of distros on Ventoy (including Deepin RC2) and even made my own version of Zorin with Dash to Panel and Arc Menu but you really can't beat Zorin. It has commercial OS look and quality.
Clean install is the way to go, BTW. Did 3 PCs and have one left.
