MS has been very consistent borking the start menu since Win8. Actually, before that too. I'm trying to think back to a time when I actually used a MS designed start menu on any version of Windows. At least since Win7 I have not used default start menus. On my current WIn11 builds I have 2 start menus, Open-Shell and MS. Of course, if you want to use a start menu to quickly and consistently get to app shortcuts (considering predictable and stable locations of shortcuts and muscle memory too), you would not be using a MS start menu.
I just stand above the melée, eager to enroll as insider on last pro beta as my rig is 100 % compatible according to MS test tool... is this a sensible thing to do ? I am seasoned on imaging/reimaging etc.
Customization ability is nice and all, but I don't interact with the start menu on any OS anywhere near enough to bother replacing it with something else. It's like a desktop background; I chose a nice one back when W10 came out, and I just default to it now. There's usually a web browser or game on my screen though so I don't even look at the background most of the time, and if I had any indication I'd get a benefit from having a solid black wallpaper, I'd go to that no problem lol (I don't have OLED). For the start menu, I press the Windows key, type a few letters of whatever app I want, and open it, and that's worked fine for me since W8, and works the same way in Linux with GNOME. And although it contradicts my earlier statement about the desktop background, I usually launch my apps from desktop shortcuts lol. The little bit of time I spent on W11, the only issue I had with the taskbar was that I couldn't right-click anywhere on it to bring up the context menu to open Task Manager (I'm used to being able to do this on W10); I believe now you have to right-click the Windows logo/start menu.
If a start menu works for you, that is good. Classic-Shell and later Open-Shell just gives one such control and personalization options (and it's much more snappy) that the MS default is near unusable to me. The trend with MS has been to take away customization, even taking away registry settings to enable faster response times. So once you're used to snappy fold-outs/hover response (especially with cascading shortcut folders), it's just very hard to get back on the modern app like menu. Plus with the silent and pp apps (latter also having shortcuts) I make these get sorted automatically in menu categories (so you don't get this giant scroll through menu) and that is not well supported in the modern menus because the icon allocations for that don't work on the new menu folders. But, whatever works. One thing is for sure, Open-Shell menu can be set to very fast response times that simply can't be achieved (or configured) with default menus. Some people, though, are really good with keyboard hotkeys and open apps via cortana/search/etc but I've never been good with that
160 is 08.15 compiled, and it is unknown whether this will be pushed this week. Maybe .168 This Thursday
Many of your posts (among others) exhibit what is currently wrong with MDL, people can't comprehensively read or understand what they've read. To be clear: 1. I didn't start the Win 11 section (since i am just a normal member and not a staff member how could i have done that). 2. Some, at least imo very inactive or fairly new, members started nagging for it and of course the staff responded positive to it, more sections means more threads means more content (wondering if they still have that pov, given the level of content it delivered). 3. I was against it because it would just need a Win 11 designation for threads about it, to separate it from the Win 10 threads. 4. I said that Win 11 specific threads eventually would replace the obsolete Win 10 threads when 10 reaches EOS/EOL (around 2025, after 10 years of Win 10 as MSFT stated from the beginning in 2015). 5. When the Win 11 section was created by @Yen and/or @Tito, i got permission to create some of the sticky threads, so i did.
guess there be a lot of bashing Windows 11 but think about it a lot bashed Windows 10 1st release and now most are running 10 awesome OS and I believe Windows 11 OS will be with better with updates next year
yea but most of that was "oh i dont think i need this" or "Games crash" or "privacy" the start menu hate could have been sidestepped with 3rd party software at least in widnows 10; there arent any full taskbar replacements for windows 11