Once in a while, I have to take a look at Mint, Pop and KDE to remind myself how ugly and clunky they are. Honestly, the best alternative to Zorin is stock Gnome with Blur My Shell and Dash to Dock which gives you a simple, nice looking Mac type experience.
So I've given up being diplomatic. For Windows users, I don't recommend anything but Zorin. For Mac users who can't afford $30 for the Pro version, I'd say go with something like Debian with stock Gnome.
Or they could install Dash to Dock on Zorin Core and turn off the normal Taskbar.
I can't bear any other distros more than one hour, I just like Zorin OS and Debian.
I use Dash To Dock Ponce, and I freaking love it! Its so much more powerful then the taskbar that comes with Zorin, and you discover that, when you right click, and click on taskbar settings, then your going to be like, wow! The transparency ability alone can make someone like me giddy lol.
And then when you discover, that you can adjust the size of your taskbar, and everything on it, add/remove feature's to it, move things around, your going to feel like your in heaven! I tell you what, you can't do that on Windows! More extensions I recommend, Sound input/output chooser, and CPU Power Manager.
Plasma can do most of that too. I'm going to do a video, using Q4OS as the host, and Q4OS as the VM with user names that will reflect the different Plasma styles!
Right click on Zorin taskbar >> Taskbar settings >> Style tab >> Override panel theme background opacity
So, Zorin taskbar has transparency settings in Core.
Also, in Ubuntu 24.04 you don't have option to change shell theme, even with Tweaks. It took me an insane amount of time to customize 24.04 to classic style. Obviously, Zorin is the winner in all categories.
Is maybe the Gnome Extension User Themes not preinstallled?
You are right, as usual. Now there's also this new extension, User Theme X.
I took a quick Look at this. I'm not sure about that. It seems to do the same but in a different Way. You could surely try it if you want. I personally would use User Themes.
I have tried the new iso of Fedora 41 that is just released with gnome 47.
It is very nice and stable. I'd say it on par with Debian 12 testing. The choice is yours 
