Good for you. If you're happy with it, that's great.
The thing is this: the controls on a vertical taskbar should be horizontal, and they should rearrange themselves in rows according to its width. So, horizontal buttons with horizontal text for each window, and status icons in columns and rows.
Any and all desktops with a start menu and a taskbar are just variations of Windows 95, and this is how Windows 95 worked. Most of the ripoffs don't do it right, and can't. A few (e.g. KDE) do it but really badly, so you get a HUGE start button and a HUGE clock, for instance.
Most people don't remember Win95 now, but I do. It really annoys me when the knock-offs can't do things the original did 29 years ago.
Can you imagine if someone came along with a new version of Vim, but they'd changed all the keystrokes and replaced all the : commands with English verbs? Instead of :wq or :x you typed SAVE FILE? People would laugh mockingly and go use something else.
That's how I feel about a half-done version of the taskbar-and-start-menu interface, like in MATE or Cinnamon.
Original Windows 95 fit into 32MB of disk space because that was the original maximum size of FAT16 drives. It was a tiny, simple OS. If someone presents me with a UI that copies the Win95 one, and basically every other FOSS desktop except GNOME >=3, Unity and Pantheon does, then the least I expect is an accurate copy of the very simple functionality that Windows 95 provided in 4MB of RAM.
Take that away, and it's ruined. It's Vim with no command mode and only cursor keys: you might as well use Notepad.
Notepad is perfectly usable and it's all a lot of people need. I'm not mocking anyone happy with it. I expect a bit more though.
