Desktop Environment of the Year

Remove the "X" next to catagory names.

Sorry, but that didn't work, now I ONLY (effectively) have the right side of the menu that I don't want to see until I click on something.

https://ibb.co/CnqJzpN

Originally Posted by Crippled all three current KDE menus are award and clunky.

The "Application Dashboard" looks like it's for a touch screen which reminds me of Windows 8 which I despise.

I use the application dashboard 100% of the time on all of my laptops. I love it. You're definitely being over dramatic and I think you're comparing to Windows to try to achieve an emotional reaction due to the anti Windows attitude some Linux uses have.

The Dashboard is nothing like the Windows8 menu. Tiles vs icons for one. Different organisation schemes. The only thing the two have in common is that they're both fullscreens but even then, if you must compare to Windows, the Application Dashboard is still more like the Windows10 tablet mode menu which scrolls vertically like the Dashboard unlike Windows8.
If you want a much more comparable menu thn compare the Dashboard with Gnome's activities menu. In my opinion those are very similar...
You describe KDE menus as cluky though. Every program is organised into relevant menus in sane locations (most of the time). While comparing to Gnome, look at it's menu if you want see cluky. All the programs are just mushed into one big section. The Application Dashboard took Gnome's concept and did it better in my opinion.
Clunkyness and Windowsy don't seems like valid statements to me.

Originally Posted by Timothy Miller Don't know why noone else uses a simple, functional menu.

I do!

Mostly this:
https://dt.iki.fi/stuff/forums/LQ/sane-menu-dmenu.png
Rarely this:
https://dt.iki.fi/stuff/forums/LQ/sane-menu-openbox.png

Originally Posted by Timothy Miller Yeah, those themes do indeed control those icons as well. I know because I always change the theme as I don't like the default "Breeze" icon theme, although there are many themes that use those same icons either out of ease or laziness.

Just installed, within the last hour, kde5 to a recent installation of -current and the icons in question are not "controlled" by those settings. I've tried several different icon collections and those four or so icons, shown in post #35 above, have not change.

Those icons are not controlled by the icon theme. Those icons are controlled by the desktop theme. Like Timothy said though, most desktop themes leave them as the default.

They are all pretty good once you get used to them but my current favorite is KDE.