Gnome is designed to mimic MacOS, and the top bar is a fixture there. KDE is designed to mimic Windows, but also lets you configure way more than Windows ever did. You can put it on top in KDE and tell it to hide when not in use, if you want.

When I first stated using GNOME the top bar was a bit off-putting but I got used to it TBH. It’s not something I think about much nowadays.

However, you actually can move it to the side or to the bottom, and/or change it in other ways, with the dash-to-pane extension so definitely check that out if the top bar is bugging you https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/

Install an extension to hide it, I just tried this and it works for me: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/545/hide-top-bar/

You can install extensions by searching for it in the GNOME extensions manager. Once installed, you can edit the settings in the same place (I found I had to move off the window to another application before hiding was applied).

The bar is meant to be very minimal and not distracting.

It takes up space, sure, but it’s close to the minimal height while still having easily readable time up top

It’s a nice place to put System-Monitor and fréon extensions

Agreed 100%

Twice as bad when you have a VM running Gnome open inside Gnome host machine.

There should be a simple Tweaks option “hide Gnome titlebar” or better yet a per-window preference setting

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/

If the top bar is set up as a menu bar, it could save space on the screen when multiple horizontally placed windows (without individual menu bars) are on the screen. Other than that, I think the general top bar stuff can just be in the bottom bar.