How can I get maximized windows not to hide behind the menu bar on primary external?

Question

I didn't have this happening on Mint 17.1.

On Mint 18.1 and also Mint 19.3 MATE, with a dual-monitor setup, and the external monitor being primary, the menu bar covers up the lower part of any maximized window (Firefox, Terminal, etc.) making some screen content inaccessible. This is especially a problem with Terminal, since I can then never see the prompt and what I'm typing there.

Terminal in particular for some reason has different results depending on what I set the "Application font" to in the Appearances applet, which affects the size of the menu bar but not the size of the Terminal output. At 16 pt font it only half-covers the last line:

But at 14 pt font, it covers the whole last line:

16 pt seems to be a sweet spot---10 pt or less and 20 pt for example both cover most or all of the last Terminal line, just like 14 pt. More than 20 pt starts to cover multiple lines. But in any case, it's a no-go for Terminal windows and also for the bottom of web sites being hidden in browser windows.

If I make the laptop built-in primary, I do not have this issue on that screen. Only the external. The problem is, I don't want the tiny screen to be where apps launch by default, otherwise I wouldn't have an external in the first place.

Unmaximizing and remaximizing a window does not solve the issue.

Is there any way to fix this?

If not, is there any way to move the menu bar to the laptop screen, but have the external screen still be considered primary for the purpose of new window creation?

Update regarding potential workarounds

1. If I disable the laptop screen, and just use the external, the problem goes away. (Obviously this isn't a solution though if I want to use both screens.)
2. The "Autohide" and "Show hide buttons" options do not work for my case because while the menu bar is hidden, I cannot see (at a glance) unread status indicators in app title bars, the clock, or system tray icons.
3. Side orientation doesn't work well for me because I need to make the bar huge in order to have the same amount of app title bar width for readability, and also makes my app windows skinnier than works for me (Google Docs in a web browser, for instance, creates a horizontal scrollbar, when there's a comment column and it's zoomed in for readability.)
4. Top orientation seemed promising---Fitz' law for closing apps apparently died sometime in the mid-90's on most OSes for supposed aesthetic reasons anyway---but Chromium, oddly, does not play well with it all, taking up the whole screen and covering up the menu bar even though it's not supposed to be coverable. (Could be a bug in Chromium, MATE, or both...but that's already true of the main issue here in bottom orientation as well.)

Answer 1

Acceptable workaround for me was to enable Show hide buttons in the Panel properties (just below autohide option, package mate-desktop 1.22.2-1~18.04.york0).

This adds 2 small buttons on each side of the panel and when you click on either the panel gets hidden.

I rarely need to see that small part of the screen so this workaround is good enough for me.

Answer 2

Seeing something similar on whatever runs on AWS Workspaces (A2L? w/Mate)

I just discovered if you right click the "taskbar", ie "Panel", and click the Properties, you can "Show hide buttons", which lets you manually show/hide the bar. This looks like a good enough workaround for me.