What about making a new Desktop not only fast, but also pretty? All the Linux Desktops look butt-ugly compared to OS X or even Windows 8 and absolutely don't make we want to give it a try. A nicely designed Desktop which is also fast and uses less resources would help getting Linux on the Desktops so much more...
> What about making a new Desktop not only fast, but also pretty?
The reason for this is that there are relatively few graphics artists who use Linux desktops and contribute to the desktop projects by creating graphics.
But there are quite pretty custom desktop themes created by people. You can look at /r/unixporn for example. Most of the screenshots there are from the tiling wm (dwm/awesome/xmonad/i3) crowd but every now and then someone posts some pretty Gnome/KDE/LXDE/Xfce screenies and themes as well.
Personally I feel that Gnome Shell is far more appealing than Windows (anything) or MacOsx.
I just showed a MacOSx user the alt-drag window resizing.... totally blew his mind, as in he couldn't understand why that wasn't a feature of MacOSx: "The Simple Operating System"
The reason is that there is no central steering to define the workflows of Apps and how and when UI elements should be used and how. That's why QT is used extensively in KDE, as it brings a lot of UI elements by default to alleviate this lack of steering.
