EDIT: As it turns out this is just how gnome is supposed to look and to get a permanently visible dock showing running apps and favorites I must install an extension like dash-to-dock
Thanks everyone to help me understand I was the problem here ๐
After using Ubuntu for years I thought it would be a good idea to try out plain old Debian for the first time.
So I downloaded the live-Image setup a VirtualBox and started installing it... installation ran trough without any problems. But I don't see any panel/taskbar anywhere.
I tried to google this and best guess was that gonme-panel was not installed (how?) after installation I tried to run it by the terminal but it only trows an error "(gnome-panel:3427): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 20:24:58.712: invalid cast from 'GdkWaylandDisplay' to 'GdkX11Display'". So before I start digging into this I just wanted to confirm that I am on the right track and not just mixing stuff up. So does anyone have an idea what went wrong here?
That is pretty entertaining to see, and also shows how many people doesn't know how plain the vanilla Gnome experience is. Most distros that care about UX end up shipping some amount of patched up Gnome stuff.
Gnome really wants to be like macOS, and I pretty much have all the same complaints about macOS as I do with Gnome. Same amount of reliance on overview mode and virtual desktops to organize and no way to bring up that one terminal window you want in a single click or key press.