I've changed my desktop a bit inspired from some of your screenshots [mostly chonky]
As you see, when I start PC I have almost empty desktop

In the bottom right corner you see
x11/trayer and
net-im/psi in it
in the middle it's
sysutils/conky
After thread about Why
we should use Opera I tried it again. It turned out that I like it [I've been using it in past] I just love how much can you customize it.
Here you see my main menu
I use
x11/rxvt-unicode as terminal, and
shells/mksh as default user shell. Pretty much everything you see running in top is what I usually run. This is one of reasons I don't like kde.... you can't see end of top there

You can also see here app menu, I use this to switch between apps quickly. I used to use extra 2 buttons on my mouse to switch between desks quickly, but that mouse died suddenly
I can switch languages using menu, i have also custom shortcuts for this. I can also get this language menu, by simply pressing menu button on keyboard [The one between right win key and right ctrl key] this way i can switch very fast between languages with simple tools
Netbeans, I just lauched it to show how do minimized apps look in next screenshot
Netbeans minimized
If anyone is interested in my config, it's available
here [mini icons aren't included]
EDIT:
oh and if you wonder how long i've been configuring this desktop.... Well for about 2-3 years, ever since I started using fvwm, I tweak/change something almost every month.... however most of hard work [theme and basic configuration] is finished long time ago.
My desktop is extremely customized {actually I wrote everything from zero], and I'm very used to it.