Comment by jraph

> Even better, you can just tap the Super key, type a letter or two of the program, and press enter.

Most DEs do that today, including KDE, Cinnamon, Xfce (at least in some config), and Windows itself (although that last one does to much including web searches when you do this).

The categories in the start menu have its advantages, that's how I discovered what program exists and does what as a child in a KDE based distro. I fail to see what's wrong with a start menu + this feature you are citing. It does discovery + efficience very well. Gnome 3's Android-like icon grid without categories (from what I recall and from the screenshots I see) seems awful for discoverability seems awful. If you don't know the icon or the name of the program you are looking, the icon grid seems awful (although I recognize keyword search should get you there, but keyword search + the categories that other DE provide seems more useful - and today, it's rare to have deep hierarchies like in win95)