I do leave the ribbon on, as it works for Arrays, Hatching, Text Editing, etc. but I rarely, if ever start a command with it.
The ribbon helps in some cases, though it's still not as fast as keyboard shortcuts ... not to mention single-click / -press tablet/keypads. There's simply no getting round the spacial memory you build up by knowing "where" the command is instead of how to get to it. And in some cases I actually turn it off since it makes ACad work slower (e.g. editing complex & large hatch shapes).
I can definitely imagine a pop-up menu at the current cursor position, though it would probably be a lot of CUI work or some extensive Lisp modding the menu on the fly. Though I'd imagine it would be more effective than having to move your cursor away from the objects you're working on each time you want to do something. And a floating toolbar (and yes they still call it that) could accomplish much the same thing (as Hangman's noted).
I'd just advise (if you go this route) to keep the pop-up as streamlined as possible - avoid nested submenus as much as you can, so you'd probably just place your most used commands in this menu instead of duplicating the entire dorp-down menu. Note you can also have several different pop-ups depending on keys pressed while right-clicking. E.g. Shift-Right-Click might bring up a different menu from a normal Right-Click. Thus you could have at least 3 different pop-ups without needing nesting.
For myself, the default right-click pop-ups are fine. The Shift-Right-Click to open the forced snaps menu is my 2nd best alternative - just under keyboard shortcuts programmed into the CUI to send enp/perp/int/cen/quad/tan/etc to the command when it asks for a point.
