Indeed. Reading this makes me suspect someone is planning to 'fix' KDE with something that will inevitably end up being awkward, expensive and take five years

Indeed. Reading this makes me suspect someone is planning to 'fix' KDE with something that will inevitably end up being awkward, expensive and take five years to mature. Unless there is a demonstrably better solution in mind leave the menus alone. Every attempt to supplant traditional menus that I have experienced has only created obscurity, added weight and fueled no end of animosity. I hate to take a bad attitude towards someone's inspiration and well meaning intentions, but the users of open source desktop environments (and proprietary ones for that matter) have endured a lot of iconoclasts, and I don't see that it has achieved much. If your plans are demonstrably better they'll take hold among the enthusiasts and spread beyond without writing think pieces to promote them. Otherwise, should you instead choose to foist your plans on the innocent, be prepared to live in a furnace for about a decade. Right or wrong that is what you can expect.