I rather like Kickoff, the polish and the smooth animations do a lot for it.

Personally, however, I prefer Lancelot more; search function calls upon KRunner, Contacts tab is very useful (as is the 'Documents' tab, but I think it needs a better name)

My only gripe is that lacks Kickoff's smooth animations.

Raptor also looks good, but I havent had a chance to try it.

Classic.
I really can't see the point of Kickoff. It takes up too much space and is totally un-intuitive. Can't comment on the others as I haven't tried them - if I ever find a reason to want to think about dumping the classic menu, I might...

According to bugs.kde.org, Lancelot will get an animation makeover when the Plasma system does, which I'm told should be ready by 4.4

kickoff

an app launcher without kopete built in but with charisma

Lancelot for me .. 1.7 just looks really nice

I'm looking forward to seeing Lancelot's 'Air' version....

@Dante Ashton
All themes got a revamp so you don't need Air just so that L can look good (I've decided to abandon the old idea of having the inner parts of L look like they are normal widgets - now they are more plasmified - see http://lancelot.fomentgroup.org/screenshots)

Damnit man, I wanna see what the future holds for Lancelot 2.0 but the page is still under construction! :P

I dunno, Lancelot has always been very slow for opening for me and not exactly sure what causes it but every so often it kills my CPU. I think it's something to do with the Kontact and Kopete merge.

@Dante Ashton
It is normal that it is under construction - L 2.0 is under construction

I tried to like Kickoff, I really did, but it just takes to long. Sure it's pretty, but I click on my menu button to pull up a program or complete a task, not to marvel at how pretty the menu is. If the classic menu would just put a search bar at the top and a shutoff Icon at the bottom of the menu it'd be nearly perfect for me.

Kickoff for me. I find it to be both a beautiful and practical application launcher.

I actually voted for Kickoff, but then decided to try the classic menu to see if it changed in 4.3, and then changed my vote because now it works just like in 3.5. The only thing I wish is that if it was possible to make the icons a bit bigger.

mshelby wrote:shutoff Icon at the bottom of the menu it'd be nearly perfect for me

You can configure that in 4.3!

Actually, my favorite menu is the one in Konqueror, because you can do so much with it.

I wonder if everyone is familiar with this menu. I was using Konqueror for years before I stumbled on it. You can find it under "Go" when Konq is in management mode, but since it's Konqueror, this menu has a URL.

programs:/

And since this is KDE, where any folder can be a desktop, this menu can be served up a whole bunch of ways besides Konqueror. You can open that URL in Dolphin, or on the Desktop with Folder View, or in the Folder View Widget, or you create a pull-down version with the quick access widget! You can bookmark it in Konqueror or Dolphin.

And you use can use Konqueror or Dolphin to open that menu in another Window Manager or Desktop environment. I've been using it in Fluxbox for years.

With Konqueror, I'll bet you can even open the menu or a submenu with an HTML link!

*(I know I've tried most of these ways of using the Konqueror menu, but they may not all be tested.)

The Konqueror app menu isn't fast, it's easy. The truth is, I don't use the menu all that much. I have set up keyboard short cuts for Konqueror, Firefox, Konsole, and the Run Command Dialogue. It's faster to use the Run Command dialogue to open an app than to search through a menu, any menu... so, when I use the menu, it's generally because I don't know the command or the name of the app, and being able to find what I'm looking for is more important than finding it fast.

I'm not quite sure which one is my favorite menu. If there were tasty menu for KDE4 that would be my choice. If there would be the gnome menu for KDE4, that would be my choice too.

By now I have kickoff and lancelot (just applications part) in my panel. Lancelot looks nice but it's so slow... And I wish it would be a little more like tasty menu with a fixed favorites bar. I find it very irritating when the menu columns change and slide. Same for kickoff. I use it because lancelot is too slow but it irritates me a lot with its sliding back and forth. And I don't like the back bar too.

In KDE3 I used the classic menu with an icon size of 32x32 (the classic menu in KDE4 is too small for me) until I discovered tasty menu. From then on I really *used* the menu, I was very impressed by tasty menu.

For starting applications most of the time I use krunner. Alas it's not that fast and not that fast to use as the KDE3 counterpart but it's ok. I use the kickoff menu when I exactely know in which category at which place I find an application.

For some applications I have separate menus in my panel, e.g. for OpenOffice.org, for some network stuff, for picture editing. Like drawers. I use the QuickAccess plasmoid and a separate folder to create those menus.

I haven't tried raptor yet.