Is there a CLI/TUI start menu like tool, with favorites/categories?
Or even better, a whole status bar at the top/bottom (also without X/wayland/framebuffer), with time, battery, maybe even launched background processes listed you can bring to front?
No reason that we can’t have some Desktop metaphor niceties on shell too, no?
The shell IS the start menu. You type the name of the program you want to start, and it starts. If you want to know the time, you type “date”; if you want to know which background processes are running, you type “jobs”, etc. That’s everything we shell people need. If you need a GUI then use a GUI.