Comment 46 for bug 43066

For people who still want a Gnome2-like desktop with a vertical panel like the one described in this bug report:

We have recently extended the the Xfce (Xubuntu) panel to support a vertical panel/horizontal items layout. Changes go well beyond the tasklist. Starting from Xfce 4.10, vertical "deskbar" is one of three supported panel modes and all plugins are (expected to be) aware of it.

To see how it works, you need to change the panel "mode" and "number of rows" (a bit unfortunate name - in vertical panels "rows" are "columns").