Hmm, I did not like the idea initially, but then I started thinking of how Emacs and (more importantly) Sublime Text work ... I must say, this very system works

Hmm, I did not like the idea initially, but then I started thinking of how Emacs and (more importantly) Sublime Text work ... I must say, this very system works amazingly well for Sublime Text, why am I presuming that it is an automatic failure for menu bars? Actually, I think that menu bars in general are a horrible crutch for pretty much every task. There is a reason why Windows introduced the "Ribbon". The Ribbon is Microsoft's way to get rid of the menu bar. Maybe Ribbons are not perfect, but they definitely improved discoverability of content. ido-mode in Emacs introduces fuzzy matching for file navigation and it is awesome. CMD-T is a similar mechanism in Textmate. Sublime Text is pretty much built on the concept of fuzzy matched palettes. All these are programs I very much like. Maybe Ubuntu is actually on to something there.