This is just a thought experiment
I ran a series of usability experiments on some "desktops". In each experiment I search for way to access the working documents, folders, tools for each of my current tasks, e.g. one task is broadly "Courses" and another is more specifically "IIT Kanpur -- Introduction to Programming in C". I should be able to put any item for the task (its zim notebook, the pdf for a textbook, a web url, or any other unix file object) on the desktop or on a shelf (dock or panel) by drag and drop from the file manager.
Further I should be able to create a separate desktop and shelf for each task, so that I can see a different set of working documents when I switch tasks.
i.e. a work-centric, document-centric interface for Getting Things Done. When I'm working on Courses I see a shelf across the top of my screen with quick access to my course folders, references, and stuff in progress. It's like a real shelf above my desk where I put things I'll need to touch when I return to working on Courses. There's a separate shelf for Admin, and for Readings, and for Journaling, etc.
The current open-source desktops fail to even let me drag a document to the dock or panel. I looked for a way to do this simple drag-and-drop task in Gnome3, XFCE, enlightenment e24, and Plasma 5. Each is a complete FAIL for this simple task. But each one provides a multitude of ways to launch an application, and you can always add on the dock of the day and get yet more (and pretty) app launchers. I read Release Notes for each of the recent releases of these desktops and almost all prominently brag of their
improved icons and better app menus and new launchers!!?!
How can one have a favorite amongst such a loser crowd of alternative application launching interfaces?
KDE Plasma did allow me to drag a document to the desktop and does provide a different desktop for each activity so it is VERY close to passing my test. There is still no concept of "shelf" where one can put work aside, putting documents on the desktop is awkward because (1) documents can't be just dragged onto the desktop (a dialog pops up asking you if you want to create a "link" or an "icon" -- do you know the difference??). And of course, documents on the desktop are less useful than having an actual shelf for work-in-progress because the desktop is covered by windows. I found the whole process of trying to keep activity-centric documents on activity-specific desktops to be workable but requires way to many mouse clicks and unnecessary transtions.
The environment that I've been using for years allows me to have a different desktop (wallpaper and icons) and different panel for each task on which I can put ANY kind of object including mountpoints, folders, documents, applications. I've got key-triggered window tiling AND window tabbing (drag one window title bar onto another window titlebar). The window manager can be asked to remember the state of each window (which monitor, dimensions, position, fullscreen, maximized, minimized, etc.) and when you open it next time will restore it the way you left it. The file manager uses a spatial view so that an object on the screen seems to be
there, not be just a transient object in a browser view allowing one to search up and down the heirarchy of many thousands of directories that are on my workstation. Rox-filer provides the desktop "pinboard" and the panels and can have any number of them and switch between them freely. This file manager allows me without lifting my hands from the keyboard to navigate the folder heirarchy, select any object, open the object or execute any shell command on that object. This feels to me like a gui SHELL.
In other words, with the simplest of all window managers and file managers I've got a document-centric, work-centric interface with on-demand window tiling and tabbing and no limitations on what I can put on the desktop or the panels (up to four panels at a time).
So MY enironment with FLUXBOX and ROX-FILER is the desktop environment that I prefer.
Everything else sucks.
