No.
Win10's Start Menu is stored in the registry instead of the file structure - much like V/7's "Games" folder did which was 99% unusable for me because of this.
Did you ever try pinning a shortcut to a file to Win8's Start screen? Well, that's one of its biggest drawbacks - and they're bringing it in full scale to Win10 Start menu now.
They really have no clue.
What? I just pinned a shortcut to a file just fine on Windows 10 start menu. Drag and drop the file onto the start button. Bam, it's pinned on the start menu. This didn't work on Windows 8, I'll give you that, but don't act like the Windows 10 start menu is exactly the same thing as what existed on Win8.
I don't know all of the places the start menu uses to populate its data, but it still seems to use folders on the system.
%AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
What other features are they missing that you need?
I would need a DX12 compatible card anyway, right? I do have the upgrade disc for Windows 8, but I've never been compelled to use it. Maybe if this will support my current or next GPU.
They said when they announced that if you had Windows 7-era hardware, DX12 will work fine, and you'll get the benefits of "to the metal" coding that it brings. IIRC, the 6x0 series for Nvidia and later, and probably cards around a similar timeline on the AMD side.
What is volume licensing?
I am getting a new rig and the last thing I want is online check in DRM BS. If Windows 8.1 has no online check DRM, I will get that for my OS.
My OS is Windows 8.1 non enterprise. If I install that and activate it immediately and I go offline for a long time in the future, it won't ask me for that BS validation, right?
Volume licensing is usually an enterprise thing, so the answer would be no you don't have it. It's when you use a single license key across multiple Windows PC's, which makes it really easy for IT to install Windows since they don't need to assign keys to individual machines and can just use a common key.
You should be fine installing it, activating and going offline.
As I said, the only time a valid license should ever get the non-genuine message is if you do significant changes to your hardware (such as changing the motherboard). However, you don't even need internet access to reactive it, you just call a 1-800 line that MS has to reactivate it, and they give you a code. Technically you never need to have Windows connect to the internet once because you can always do activation offline.
