I agree regarding the trajectory of the KDE and GNOME projects, but XFCE has made huge strides in the past five years and stands as a great model of evolutionar

I agree regarding the trajectory of the KDE and GNOME projects, but XFCE has made huge strides in the past five years and stands as a great model of evolutionary rather than revolutionary development (to borrow from Nimzowitsch's vocabulary). It is a very usable, attractive desktop environment. It even has a QuickSilver-like tool built-in these days (Alt-F3).