Gnome Standard is the default UI. To change it, click the gear-like icon during your first login and choose "classic" instead of "standard":


Gnome Standard or "Gnome Shell"

See for more information https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShell/Tour

The default look and feel appears like this

You can click on "Activities" to search for applications, get the menu and have an "Exposé-like" view of all windows 

Gnome Classic

See for more information  https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/gnome-classic.html.en

As you can see, "Gnome Classic" is more similar to the Windows or the KDE experience of OpenSuSE Leap 42

Again "Activities" allows to find applications, but in a more familiar drop down menu style.

1 Comment

  1. Robin Hogan

    If you log in to the minimalist standard desktop, it seems to be impossible to ever change to "classic" - the cog does not appear in the login screen.  I tried "gnome-shell --mode=classic -r" and it just crashed the sesson.