It certainly is a 'desktop', it might not be yours but it bears resemblance to mine. The 'desktop' metaphor might have been equated with complicated all-integrated environments like Windows, MacOS, Gnome and KDE but in the end it comes down on something-on-a-computer which provides a place to work and access to the resources the computer has to offer. Like physical desktops these come in al shapes and sizes ranging from an empty slab with a lamp and not much more to ornate baroque monstrosities with a zillion drawers, Rolodexes, mail-in-out-boxes, staple machines, paper dispensers, coffee machines, vortex portals and flux capacitors.
Some ascribe to the diction that 'perfection is reached when there is nothing left to take away', depending on your starting point you either end up with a lightweight environment like Xmonad (et al) plus a few tools or at a lobotomised full desktop like Gnome.
> It certainly is a 'desktop', it might not be yours but it bears resemblance to mine
It does resemble mine, either.
In fact I'm not a desktop user.
> or at a lobotomised full desktop like Gnome
That's super not nice.
Regular people want a tool, not something you fall in love with and spend most of the day refining.
Most people have hobbies outside of the tech world, they will spend hours growing their gardens, but couldn't care less about "keyboard focuesed" or "run programs in the terminal" or "I quickly noticed the huge compile time of KDE".
If they can't use it properly, like they are used to, it's broken for them.
Some ascribe to the diction that 'perfection is reached when there is nothing left to take away', depending on your starting point you either end up with a lightweight environment like Xmonad (et al) plus a few tools or at a lobotomised full desktop like Gnome.