All of us make mistakes, and I was playing around with menus.  I was editing them using the $HOME/.config/menus/lxde-applications.menu and I am not sure what I did, but the next thing I knew the menu was foobar.  Apps all in one submenu and a real mess.  I tried to restore the original menu to factory but no luck.

I looked around the internet for a menu editor and tried 3 different ones. LXmed didn't work for me, I think it was an issue with the Java but it never got beyond install.  I cannot recommend it for anyone at all. Next I tried Alacarte and while it installed via apt, it didn't help edit the menus.  Seems incompatible with the layout or something?  Finally I tried, MenuLibre 2.2.0 and it really does work.  It seems to lag a bit on creation, but it is not exactly for LX but Gnome menus -- not much difference there.  Within the $HOME/.config/menus folder it added a symbolic link called gnome-applications-merged which just points to $HOME/.config/menus/applications-merged in the same folder.  It creates its voodoo with that folder subset.

It will be less of a  chore to sort all those programs now.  But this in turn got me pondering, what if you removed the Menu plugin, and replaced it with an Application Launch Bar on the panel and set the first item in there to be your very own custom menu?  For old neckbeards like myself, it would really be no issue to script a multilevel menu using YAD or Zenity.  For now I think MenuLibre is a good enough to accommodate most users.

sudo apt install menulibre

It will show up in Accessories ... I hope. ;)