Not necessary, but I'd argue it was still the predominant method for 7 and even 8 (from what I've seen people use, anyway). I do find myself personally with 10 using search a lot more (haven't had to observe others, so no idea about others usage), but sometimes I've had to shift over to the Win10 equivalent of the start menu -> applications method if I can't remember the name of the application outright (this was a bigger problem for me prior to Curse becoming part of Twitch, admittedly. They had two different clients and one of them was a bit more vague in naming).

I was more alluding to the gnome method which last I used it has a similar menu with the tiered folder structure. Maybe they have added search as well, but my memory of GNOME is too fuzzy so I had to go with the fresher (for me) Windows equivalent (granted, with Windows 10 the applications folder essentially hangs out to the left of the Windows 8 start screen-esque area so calling it Applications folder would be a misnomer on my part).