KDE 4 is barely eight months old, and already it has three options for a main menu. Until now, users have either used the default Kickoff, which makes for awkward navigation of the menu tree, or reverted to the familiar but unwieldy classic menu.

Lancelot is one of three menu styles for KDE, the K Desktop Environment. It is similar in some respects to mintMenu of Linux Mint, but with a lot more features and a lot more configurable options. This article is written to showcase all the features of this menu, which is developed and maintained by Ivan Čukić.

Lancelot and Raptor are alternative menus intended for KDE 4. We are, however, at the frosty point, and we should ask ourselves the most important question here - which one to choose.

The K Desktop Environment (KDE) has more menu styles than any other desktop environment available. There is the Classical type, the Kickoff style (which most users dislike), Lancelot (better than Kickoff, but with a few shortcomings), the ROSA Launcher (for Mandriva Desktop 2011), and the Takeoff Launcher.

There are several menu styles available for users of the K Desktop Environment. Virtually all, should be familiar with the Classic menu, the Kickoff menu, and Lancelot. I have recently published several articles on the Takeoff Launcher, and there is, of course, Mandriva’s ROSA Launcher.

Today, I bring another menu style to your attention. It is called AppMenu-QML.

As controversial as it has been, i've been a supporter of KDE 3's Kickoff menu ( as introduced by openSUSE Linux ), and hence a supporter of the new KDE 4 default menu. There are some vocal protesters, but i feel that this sort of menu is a huge leap forward in general

Although the future belongs to newer application launchers like Kickoff, Lancelot or Raptor, some users prefer the old K Menu style. Nothing wrong with that. That's the reason why the plasma team made it really easy to switch the menu to a more KDE 3 like style.

There were two main problems with the Lancelot Part applet. The first was the name. The second problem was that a lot of users thought that Lancelot Part does nothing.

I’m not going to make a detailed post, just a screen-shot based overview of the new features you can expect in KDE 4.5.