I personally don't care much about the desktop environment as long as it doesn't take up a lot of resources. I mean all I really need is a panel at the top of

I personally don't care much about the desktop environment as long as it doesn't take up a lot of resources. I mean all I really need is a panel at the top of my screen with a calendar/clock and couple of indicators/applets (battery, network, sound, email) and some kind of file manager, system configuration is usually easier done by just editing the conf files directly. That said, I agree that the Desktop Environment situation in Linux is just bonkers, a lot of time and effort has been invested in a bunch of different DE's, each being used by a good chunk of the user base and new ones pop up every now and then just adding to the fragmentation.