I guess I don't quite understand what the selling point of a "desktop environment" is. I use a grab-bag of random software but generally don't bother with the KDE and GNOME-specific stuff.

It reminds me of things like the pack-in software you get with Windows. It's convenient because it all comes in one place and more or less works together, but not much of it is particularly best-of-breed.

I guess they've sucked a lot of air out of some niches though-- I suspect a lot of utilities for things like system configuration and file management have turned into parts of the desktop environment rather than standalone tools.