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Advantages
Why have I settled into this system, and what benefits do I gain from it? I take advantage of the best of both the X and console worlds. I get the graphical abilities of X without all the clutter that usually attends it, and I can work much more quickly and with less strain on my hands because I don't have to use a mouse.
Simplicity
At any moment, my screen is devoted to only one thing. As I type this, all I see is XEmacs showing this buffer. Since I can only see what I'm working on at this moment, I have to make the choice to go to something else. I can't be distracted by text in an X-Chat window behind this one, or by buddies appearing and disappearing in the Gaim window in the corner. If someone messages me, centericq will play a sound; I don't need to watch IM obsessively. If I'm distracted, it's because my mind is distracted by a thought of something else, not because of a flash of color in the periphery of my vision.
Since there's nothing to tweak, I'm not tempted to endlessly fidget with my windows and reconfigure my window manager, moving this window a bit to the left and that one to desktop two instead of four. I don't get bored with a theme and spend 45 minutes looking for a new one.
Clarity
Every application takes up the entire screen, and I can use large fonts to reduce eye strain. Mozilla has the full width and height of my screen, and if I have to scroll horizontally, it's the site author's fault, not mine.
Flexibility
When I'm home, I do all my work on my laptop, which runs as an xterminal connected to my more powerful desktop machine. I like being able to move the laptop from place to place. The desktop's monitor is only used for watching DVDs.
Since all my processes are running on the desktop, if something goes wrong with my laptop, I can reattach my session on the desktop and go on working. Since I don't rely exclusively on GUI applications, if something goes wrong that prevents me from running X, if I'm placed in an environment in which I can't run X, or if I want to persist in my untested but heartfelt belief that not running X saves battery life, I can be happy with the console.
When I leave home and run my laptop independently, I use the same X system on it. Before leaving, I turn off mail delivery and run a script that rsyncs /var/www and /home/jeff to the laptop. I detach and go. If, while I'm on the road, I want to check the status of a job I left running at home, I can ssh back and reattach my home session. When I get home again, I turn off mail delivery on the laptop, rsync back to the desktop, reattach the desktop session, and push on.
Stability
Given the choice, ratpoison would run forever. I don't worry about my window manager locking up, crashing X, or displaying random strange behavior.
More importantly, it doesn't even matter if X does take a dive. All my applications are still running in screen. I can hit ctrl-alt-bksp, run startx again, type screen -D -R in gnome-terminal, and the session will reattach. I can go on like nothing happened.
In fact, it doesn't matter if the whole computer shuts down. Sometimes, I don't notice that the cat has knocked the laptop's power cable loose again[2], and suddenly see it suspending to disk. No problem; I bring it back up, reconnect it to the server, and reattach the screen session that's happily continued to run there all the time.
If a tree falls on the server, my processes will go down with it, but I can't help that. There has to be some point of failure, eventually.
Obscurity
I won't call it genuine security that would protect from a malicious attack, but there is an element of obscurity to the system that can protect from a friend who wants to play a practical joke when I walk away. I keep xlock on "^O x", but even if I step away from the keyboard without locking it, someone stepping in tends to be confused by a screen that shows no "close" buttons and a keyboard set to Dvorak.
Conclusions
The desktop metaphor has its place. It may even be essential for people who don't want to understand what's happening beneath their computer's GUI surface. If you do know how to use your computer without pointing and clicking, consider that you have the option to dispense with the metaphor, and may find yourself more productive if you do. You can have the ability to run all the graphical applications you need without the clutter of a root window full of icons hidden under layer upon layer of windows.
This isn't for everyone, even among the digerati. An artist may have a genuine need to have several windows of images in view at once. For someone like myself who works in text, I find it an excellent system. If something like this would be a good fit for you, I hope you've found this description useful.
In closing, I'll admit to a certain impish glee in putting this article in the themes area of our articles section. In a sense, it belongs because it's a description of how I "theme" my desktop. In a more legitimate sense, it should be thrown out because there is no "desktop" in my system, and nothing to theme. Try to troll gently in the comments.
