(If you know where I stole this from, I love you.)
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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If GNOME did a standard start menu style interface in 99% sure I’d be using that.
Which is funny because I don’t like start menus and wouldn’t use it
I find it weird how fixated people are in the start menu. To me it feels extremely clunky experience, no matter was it plasma or windows.
The way gnome has combined task switcher and "start menu" (rather comparable to finder in macos) just feels so much more natural.
Then there's the application menu thing that I've maybe used twice in the past 5 years lol
Gnome with Arcmenu is what you are looking for. It's probably worth checking out Zorin OS as it is Gnome based and has templates for star menu.
You know you're doing things right when there's 2.5 million downloads to change a core paradigm of your DE.
Most users come from a Windows background, so they’re used to the "simplicity" of its start menu. For unknown reasons, many still favor the limited Windows-like experience over the native GNOME shell...
To be fair, I probably wouldn't feel the need to care about GNOME at all were it not for the fact that it still the standard DE for large, newbie-facing distros. I still favour the Windows paradigm, and a lot other people do too, and it doesn't really matter whether it's familiarity or actually preferring it (which I genuinely do). I don't really appreciate hearing the standard GNOME-user polemics about it, especially when both sides usually end up acknowledging that it's personal preference. I'm not saying you're using that argument out of bad faith, but it's the kind of thing I see a lot and it really bothers me, because it is/would be rightly criticised were it the other way round.
Point is, some people just genuinely don't like GNOME, and it doesn't have to be because of simplicity (Plasma is rarely referred to as simple), familiarity, or a hate-boner for GNOME or Mac.
I think it's that it's jarring to go from "let me add a new thing to what I am doing" to "I need something new. EVERYTHING GO AWAY SO I CAN LOOK AT WHAT I WANT"
Are you just talking about the way the app launcher uses the whole screen? That seems like the silliest thing to care about… it’s there for 2 seconds while you type the name of the app you want, and letting you focus on that task. It’s not like I’m browsing the web in the background while I wait for the start-menu-equivalent.
yep
well, I find it jarring. It's my preference/feeling/aesthetic and I'm entitled to it. There are enough ways to do that don't take up the whole screen that my opinion must be fairly common. Macs have spotlight, the start bar that has existed forever, Krunner...
Of course you’re entitled to your preference, no debating that.
I found the happily short-lived windows “metro” interface similarly jarring like you describe, but the gnome equivalent has never caused me any difficulty for some reason.
That's interesting. what separates the two for you? Because I dislike them both for the same reason. Is it the subtle blur and transparency for gnome?
I think that’s it: simply blurring the background instead of just disappearing, it makes it feel like it’s not “gone”; just not the current focus, so to speak.
I also was on Ubuntu for a lot of the time while they were fooling around with “Unity” so I’m sure my experience is skewed compared to a clean pure gnome setup.
I agree. There is basically nothing to learn on GNOME that would take more than 5 minutes to explain. Windows sucks and included in that is the UI. I really don't understand clinging to that UI so hard. If I didn't know Stockholm syndrome wasn't real, I'd call it akin to that ..
Because Gnome Shell is terrible! Or, people just want to use their computer and not have to learn a whole new way to do it. Most desktops understand this.