Say hi to my rather cluttered Windows XP SP3 desktop. Other than the mess, the only thing that's different from a typical Windows desktop is that I've placed the menubar on top--where it was intended to be! :-)
And now say hello to my much neater Linux Mint/Cinnamon desktop. You'll notice that except for having the Menu button on the top left instead of XP's Start button, it looks pretty much like XP. Mint/Cinnamon does more than than that, it also works--left-click to select, double-left-click to run, right-click for properties--just like XP.
Here we have a typical Windows XP application--Microsoft Word set to use menus instead of the annoying ribbon. You know it well.
And, here we have LibreOffice's Writer application with a document. Notice how "different" it looks from Word? That's right. It's doesn't. It works the same and it can also produce Word-compatible documents.
Here we have my XP Start button menu. I'm sure it looks familiar to you.
And, here's a closer look at Mint's Menu. Do you think you can pick this up after having used the Start Menu for years? I'll bet you can, with no trouble at all.