What's the deal with desktops?

[pokerfan]

Linux supports all the fancy desktops with their widgets, gadgets, doodads, doohickeys, gizmos, thingamabobs, thingamajigs and whatchamacallits, yet I eschew them all. This is my desktop. I don't need dual panels so that's one of the first things I change with a new Gnome install. I don't need to know the temperature on my third core.

A dock seems the most ridiculous in terms of screen area. I could have dual 30 inch monitors and not want to begrudge more than 24 pixels to the panel. When I want to run an ap I go to the menu. Could I customize that? Yes. But why? I frequently need to run someone else's machine. I like knowing where everything is in the menu.

Apologies for the width. If I shrunk it any further, the text wouldn't be legible.



From left to right: the main menu, minimize windows, trash, http://linux.about.com/cs/linux101/g/googlizer.htm">Googlizer, notes, current applications, notification area, system montior, indicator applet, date and time.

So what's the deal with desktops?