Same here. Currently, there are 155 icons, covering everything basically (shortcuts to programs/games, .bat, .xls, .txt, .pdf, image, audio files and folders and archives too, of course).

Definitely prefer desktop icons for games and Microsoft Office, but stuff I access constantly like browsers and Discord are delegated to my taskbar. Just has a nice priority based split that I prefer.

Nah, I use i3. :)

Even under Windows, using desktop icons (and wallpapers) would be a bit silly considering my desktops are seldom visible due to being covered by programs. It's also faster to use keyboard shortcuts to run commonly used programs and Open-Shell or Start8 for everything else.

Well, hello from the looking glass.

But I haven't used Windows since 2016, so I never really got into the "alternative shells" thing.

i3...
never got why anybody would want to use that

I'll probably end up on Sway eventually. I haven't made the switch to Wayland yet though.

Open-Shell (despite the name) isn't actually an alternative shell, just a start menu replacement.

I've always preferred the Start Menu + Taskbar 'Quick Launch' rather than the desktop or launchers. Hierarchical data arrangement (applications under Applications, games under Games, ability to further sub-divide into genres, eg, Games - FPS, Games - RPG, etc, or game age, or store, etc) just makes sense if you install a lot at once. As for being an 'obsolete relic', (pulls out phone, sees the icons on a typical Android smartphone's Home Screen are literally sitting on its 'desktop'), billions of people still use them every day.

I usually keep a couple of shortcuts for the games that I've been playing lately. A few become permanent - Civ IV BTS isn't going anywhere. ;)

same , i just put the others into a folder named Games

I prefer uncluttered desktop, so there usually are only a couple of icons on mine. But behind it is a mess of hardly organized files. Most of the time I can find what I need because I generally know where I'd put the file I'm currently looking for, but to unfamiliar eyes it's probably a chaos.

I was always looking for ways to free my cluttered desktop from icons, and I've experimented with a few tools, from icon folders to launchers to multiple desktops to scroll through and hide the icons on etc. But I wasn't really happy with any of these solutions.

Then Win 8/8.1 introduced the metro screen with its tiles, aesthethically hideous by default, but when I discovered the free OblyTile tool which allows users to fully customize these tiles, new possibilities opened up and I was finally able to clear up my desktop and move all the shortcuts to the metro screen (hidden on start with 8.1), where, with a little work involved, I could make them visually pleasing as well, e.g. like a shelf full of game covers. So I was convinced that I had finally found what I had been looking for all the time.

Alas, Win10 comes with significant changes to the metro screen tiles, making it much harder to customize them, so now you still have ugly tiles in Windows but you can't make them pretty anymore, at least not with free tools like OblyTile which is no longer supported. Realizing that all the work I put in my nice Win 8 tiles would prove in vain as soon as I moved to Win 10 or beyond, I stopped bothering and have resigned myself to a desktop crammed full of icons again. :(

I still use desktop icons, heaps of them, organized in categories, so I always know where to look.
I've always found it far more intuitive and faster than something like the Start Menu or other menus.

I do have a bunch of things I regularly use, pinned though, and same with the Quick Launch area of the taskbar.

I'm not one to change, unless I see a real benefit.

But hey, each to their own.

P.S. I like how I can type the first letter of a program name (shortcut), and cycle through them on the desktop. I also never have file extensions displayed in my shortcuts.

P.S.S. My desktop icons hide after 5 seconds unless I am moving my mouse. I also have a program that saves icon positions on my desktop, so I can restore them if a game etc stuffs the resolution up. I also use a big widescreen monitor with this Netbook PC, so have plenty of desktop real estate.

Of course. It never even occured to me not to. I was so puzzled by the question I wasn't even sure if it's a serious one or some joke I don't get.

But then, I'm a relic of an old paradigm myself.

Yep, I use desktop icons, but I`m now slowly running out of space, nearly every inch of my screen is now filled with icons for the different programs. Not sure what happens, if I install so many games that the icons don`t fit anymore on my screen.

It's middle ground for me. I have some icons for frequently used applications, but stopped using them for games. I use Galaxy to manage almost every installed title, so there's no reason to make icons for them on the desktop. In the past however I always made an icon for every game.