TheLinuxExperiment: Menus, windows, launchers & system trays SUCK. What can we replace them with?

If you think about productivity, you can't help but think that having the default state of your computer being an image with a few icons on it is less than stellar. For opening files, it will never be tidy enough to give you access to all you need, you need a launcher or a folder structure, meaning the desktop is bad at this. For opening apps, having visual shortcuts on the desktop is a duplicate of whatever panel or launcher you have.