I recently installed Gnome on my Lenovo Thinkpad T540p. I am using Debian 10 as my OS. When I boot up all I get is a black screen and the word "Activities" in the upper lefthand corner of the screen. When I click on it I get a series of icons which indicate the various program options. How do I get a normal drop down menu that shows things like "settings," "accessories," etc.? It's very strange...I've never encountered this before. It works, but it's not showing me sufficient options. Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thank you in advance.

The short answer is you don't. Gnome has not offered that type of menu since v. 3.

However, if you go down to the bottom of the activities panel on the left (the default location) and click the nine dotes ("Show Application"), you will ge a list of applications; at the bottom, there is a button to switch between "Frequent" and "All."

You can also start to type the name of an application/feature in the "Type To Search" box, and Gnome will present a list of applications in response to the search; as you type, the number of choices will narrow. For example, you can type "sett" and the list will narrow to the "Settings" program.

That is really lousy. I think the format of Xfce is much better but I was unable to get the function keys on my laptop to work properly in Xfce. They do in Gnome but the layout of Gnome is nutty, in my view. Lenovo now has the function keys merged with other keys on the top row and Xfce seems not to like that. At least I was unable to get it to work so someone suggested that I try Gnome. Let me see if I can figure out what you're talking about. Thanks for your reply!

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I also dislike Gnome, but I use it in my CentOS VM because I like to keep my hand in.

Gnome decided that it should simplify the desktop. But they misspelled "simplify" as d-u-m-b-d-o-w-n.

MATE and Cinnamon are both forks of Gnome v. 2 created by persons who did not like the changes in Gnome v. 3; they both offer more traditional dropdown hierarchical menus. Between the two, I prefer MATE, but that is merely a matter of taste; both work quite nicely. You might want to check them out.

I tend to favor the Fluxbox window manager over any desktop environment, but I usually have KDE installed because I quite like KDE applications, even if I'm not using the KDE interface.

I wish I could, but I can't speak to the Fn keys issue.

Well, to put it simply, the Xfce desktop is apparently programmed for the old style keyboard with a separate row of function keys across the top. As I'm sure you know, the newer iterations of Lenovo ThinkPads have combined function keys with things like volume up and down, screen brightness, muting sound, etc. So the Xfce desktop doesn't correspond with the keys on the more recent ThinkPad models. From what I understand, keys can be individually reprogrammed but that would probably take me well out of my depths. Someone told me, I don't know if this is true, that there is a way you can extract the entire keyboard sequence from the Gnome desktop and transfer it directly to the Xfce desktop! So you would then have the appearance of the Xfce format but the key signals would now function correctly. I don't know if anyone knows how to do that but it's certainly intriguing.

I am not familiar with the other desktops you mentioned other than KDE. Maybe they are worth trying and perhaps one of them will correspond with the combined function keys now used on Lenovo Thinkpads. Another thing Lenovo did that I dislike is they made the keyboard more like the feel on the MacBook. The older Thinkpads had a more substantial feel to the keyboard...very much like a desktop keyboard. The new super light touch key is not for me. It's sad because Thinkpads were long known for being super compatible with Linux. Apparently that's not the case anymore. At least not without some tweaking.

Let me try a different approach. Is there a way to make Xfce work on a Lenovo Thinkpad T540p with combined function keys at the top? Maybe someone has had experience with getting this to work. I prefer Xfce greatly because it doesn't do any more than you ask it to. Gnome gets into weird stuff that doesn't make sense to me. There must be a way to make Xfce compatible with a Lenovo Thinkpad. Thank you for any help that can be offered!

What exactly do you have in the top row? Is it the sort where the keys labeled F1, F2, etc also have a symbol? As I understand it, the Fn key at the bottom left should make them work as function keys rather than putting it sleep or whatever. Does that work?

I don't know if this is true, that there is a way you can extract the entire keyboard sequence from the Gnome desktop and transfer it directly to the Xfce desktop! So you would then have the appearance of the Xfce format but the key signals would now function correctly. I don't know if anyone knows how to do that but it's certainly intriguing.

GNOME shell extensions can somewhat alleviate the worst symptoms of GNOME. E.g. on Debian, the GNOME Classic session is shipped in the package gnome-shell-extensions. But there's much more:
or just look them up on packages.debian.org or even on https://extensions.gnome.org (they could be installed from there directly, too).