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Mary Jo Foley reports at ZDNet that according to sources who've had good track records on Windows information, Microsoft won't be delivering a new Start Menu for Windows 8 with its coming Windows 8.1 Update 2, after all. "Up until recently, Microsoft was hoping to make a new "Mini" Start Menu part of a second update to Windows 8.1," says Foley. "Windows 8.1 Update 2 was and still is, last I heard slated to arrive in August of this year." Microsoft's operating systems group has decided to hold off on delivering a Microsoft-developed Start Menu until Threshold, the next "major" release of Windows. Threshold, which may or may not ultimately be called Windows 9, is expected to be released in April 2015.
The original Windows 8 interface lacked the Start Menu, a familiar component of previous versions of the operating system, replacing it with the live tile-driven Start screen. Many users didn't like the change, and some PC manufacturers and developers offered ways to bring back versions of the old Start Menu. Microsoft appeared to relent at Build when it unveiled the revised Start Menu, enhanced with Windows Modern UI improvements.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ancientt on Wednesday June 04 2014, @06:31PM
There are many, many opinions on that. There are hundreds of options and every one of them has someone who is passionate about it. I've personally tried to use about a dozen or so for extended periods and what I would recommend today is different than what I recommended five years ago. I set my girlfriend up with Ubuntu when we started dating and she liked it and later I set up Mint as a replacement and she liked it as well. She married me last year so I think Mint is at least not bad enough to end relationships. It is what I'm currently using and so I'd recommend it first.
If you just want to stick your toe in to test the waters, there are lots of CDs you can run off of without needing to do an actual install. I like Slax best for a nothing much but pretty snappy option. I created custom Slax installs for some kiosks and it is easy enough to use that the office is generally happy using it.
Other people will recommend Fedora, OpenSuse, Ubuntu and Debian for novices, or branch into BSDs and suggest PCBSD or FreeBSD. There are some others that are better for people, even novices, with a particular niche of preferred usage, like Scientific Linux for people who work in math and science. The good news is that no matter what you choose, there is probably a way to get any distro to do something you like from a different one, with varying degrees of required effort.
You asked using the word "flavor" which I more commonly associate with people comfortable with Unix. I like Unix a lot and have used Xenix, OpenSuse, Solaris, AIX and (shudder) SCO. You might be interested in Oracle Solaris or illumos if you want real Unix or consider one of the BSDs if you just want something that works like Unix. Typically Unix and very Unix-ish distributions aren't as friendly to novices, but some of the documentation on Unix beats everything I've seen in Linux.
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(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday June 07 2014, @03:39PM
I'd postulate that the overwhelming number of options and opinions is a large detriment to the adoption rate of Linux by Windows users. That said, these comments have been informative, and I've decided to try Mint on VirtualBox. Thanks!
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek