Add an option to restore the ‘classic menu’ that was standard in Cinnamon 6.4.13.

[hitgub043]

Currently, the only option to bring back the classic start menu is to use third-party apps, an obvious security risk.
The new menu is change for change's sake, which is precisely the design philosophy that drives users away from modern Windows and has no place in the Linux ecosystem.

The classic menu can be made optional, but no such option currently exists in Mint.

[Axel-Erfurt]

Currently, the only option to bring back the classic start menu is to use third-party apps, an obvious security risk.

Which security risk?
The Classic Menu Applet is the the old cinnamon menu.

[hitgub043]

If you're referring to this, it's not really the actual classic menu, it's a remake by a third party:
https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/applets/view/432

But the core issue is that this needs to be installed at all, when it was a perfectly functional part of the distro that was arbitrarily removed.

[mtwebster]

A trusted, long-time contributor took the old applet, renamed the important bits and added it to the store.

[mtwebster]

Mint hosts all third-party extensions for Cinnamon, and its maintainers monitor and approve contributions to them and provides a streamlined way to add them within Cinnamon itself.

[hitgub043]

Why was the menu changed, rather than simply having new options added?
For example, the power buttons can no longer be arranged vertically to the left side of the start menu like they could be prior to 22.3. Why was this a forced change, instead of the new layout being optional? Was Cinnamon so thoroughly altered between updates that a vertical button layout became impossible to render?

Changes to the UI should be additions, not replacements. "Change for change's sake" is Microsoft's design philosophy. It's really frustrating to see this from Mint, which is the distro that's supposedly the go-to option for people accustomed to Windows who want to avoid unnecessary changes.

And the solution is just to install something from an independent developer? I don't want to have to download a bunch of applets from random people just to restore functions that used to be part of the OS itself. :(

[mtwebster]

So, we can never change designs? It's not 'change for change's sake', it's change because we thought it would be better! Give me a break.

I'm sorry you have a hangup over using our (quite safe) extensions ecosystem - you're making it sound dirtier than it is.

[hitgub043]

It's not the change that's problematic; it's the removal of existing options. Why not just add the new option to the existing ones? If you replace things arbitrarily, how is that not just change for change's sake?

Like in my example, what is the reason, from a development perspective, that the power buttons can no longer be positioned vertically, when this was possible in the immediately previous version? I can't imagine there was an insurmountable obstacle in retaining such a feature, so I am genuinely curious how a decision was made to actively remove it. (Which would seem to require extra work!)

[mtwebster]

the power buttons can no longer be positioned vertically, when this was possible in the immediately previous version?

That's just how the layout was - it wasn't optional, it wasn't a feature.

I didn't rework the applet, you'd have to ask @clefebvre, but if I had to venture a guess, they wasted a lot of space, and didn't really fit with the aesthetic of other layout changes.