In vanilla GNOME, you can turn on Window List system extension which is like Windows' task bar and shows your open apps. It also has a system tray, if that's what you mean. Obviously you can add a lot of other stuff with user extensions.

I also use GNOME pretty vanilla and like it that way. I add the Tiling Shell extension though, just to snap windows to corners and not just sides. That's the one thing I'd prefer.