You can still have this a few ways.
xfce4-panel with xfce4-appmenu-plugin, in essentially any DE of your choice
Including GNOME btw. Just because they have their crippled panel doesn't mean you can't write an extension (or ask me for mine) that just hides that nonsense, and position xfce4-panel in its place
KDE has it also but KDE is just a bit too...KDE for me.
Or, there's Fildem, which is nice but can be super wonky at times with checkbox/radio items within menus.