Pale Moon because it still supports Windows 7. I can't stand the UI of Windows 10 or above, including the forced updates and constant changes. I would rather my computer be exactly as I left it when I go to use it. It also has a nice Aero theme that goes well with Windows 7.
The reason many people
used to fill their desktop with icons was due to the start menu. Back in the Window 3.x days the entire desktop was known as the Program Manager and all your icons were in tiled groups all there within view. It was a fast way to organize and have "at a glance" access to every program on your machine.
When Windows 95 came out, all that changed. The "start menu" took the Program Manager and hid it behind a ton of nested menus. To get to, say, Microsoft Flight Simulator, you had to click Start, then hover over Programs, then Games, then Microsoft Games, then Microsoft Flight Simulator, then, untimately, clicking the icon titled Flight Simulator 5.0. If, for any reason, you missed the folder, or hovered just outside the menu, you had to start all over again. Everyone HATED the Start Menu so in a way to speed everything up and basically recreate the Program Manager, they often placed desktop shortcuts to all their apps, documents, and games. That's the origin of the cluttered Windows desktop.
Despite everyone having claimed 'OMG they took the start menu away in Windows 8!!!' the reality for many people was that they HATED the start menu's extra steps. So even in the era of Windows 10 and 11, the cluttered desktop still exists. I personally thought the Start Screen of Windows 8 was nice, as it brought back the Program Manager in a more modern sense. The parts I hated about 8 was the flat design, along with the weird gesture controls if you're using a laptop with touchpad, and the 'charms' bar that made shutting down the system a confusing ordeal. Many apps were trying to be proto-UWP and relied on gestures that you never got an introduction to. For example, to download and read a book on the Kindle app for Windows 8.1, you had to tap and drag down on the book icon. On Android or iOS, you just tapped the book and it downloaded and opened in one step. The 'touch and drag down to download and open a book' was NEVER shown on first run. A ton of Windows 8 apps did this and made using the OS a pain.
The quote should be 'seriously stop treating it like Windows 95!' Windows 7 is like 10 in that you can both pin to start and pin to taskbar. I have most of my oft-used app icons on a desktop gadget.
Here's my Dell Vostro's current setup, albeit with a lot of stuff running. The gadget is on the right side, with 'apps' listed. That's my 'pins'
