Linux Mint is a great Linux distro.  What I particularly like is the their Start Menu/MintMenu (or whatever you would like to call it).  However, there is one quirk that I never did understand: By default, the MintMenu will open up to the last state it was in.  For example, if you searched for “preferences”, then close the menu; the next time the menu opens, it will automatically show the search results for “preferences”.  I find this behavior to be particularly odd, and doesn’t make sense in my opinion.  Indeed, if I just opened an application, why would I want to see the search results for the application I just opened? It makes much more sense for the menu to start at its beginning position: the Favorites menu.

The Remedy:

Luckily in Linux Mint 9, this can be changed.  You can now set (among other things) the default behavior of the MintMenu to always launch the Favorites list.  Although this feature is available, there isn’t much documentation on how to actually set it.  Simply searching for “Menu” or “Preferences” in the MintMenu search bar does not yield the necessary results to alter this configuration.  Thus, I felt so inclined to document how to do this.

Follow the instructions below to set the default settings for the Linux Mint MintMenu:

1. Right-click on the MinutMenu and select “Preferences”:
   
2. In the Preferences window, select the “Options” tab, and click “Always start with favorites pane”.
   
3. Close the preferences window and you are all set!