Comment by rollcat

> The (maybe) rising solution is "build-your-own-desktop" options [...].

This is not a solution for power users, this is a half-hearted non-solution for people with too much time on their hands. As a power user, I need the computer to do the stupid work for me, so I can focus on the more interesting/important stuff, like playing games, recording a song, building an app, or just making a living.

I play guitar. I tried building one. It was terrible. There's a good reason why there's very few luthiers among guitarists.

> Maybe it's early days.

People have been doing this since before KDE. I started using Linux around 2002, and it wasn't long until I was theming Fluxbox.

If you want a decent and hackable desktop environment, start with matching the functionality of OS X 10.4, then work from there.