The biggest issue with "desktop environments" is that they try to emulate windows. The problem with that is that there are not only a series of widgets, but al

The biggest issue with "desktop environments" is that they try to emulate windows. The problem with that is that there are not only a series of widgets, but also separate programs/libraries made to do what was designed to be done from a shell. For example, in the file manager, you can right-click a file, and decide what program it opens with. That might mean the file manager has emulated some sort of registry. Alternatively, to better integrate with the system, it might be using xdg-open. The goal should not be to make a closely integrated system, but a loosely coupled set of consistent, simple programs that let the user control specific aspects of the OS. KDE and GNOME have improved a lot in this respect, but they still seem to have the wrong goals.