My usual desktop is something I call "Kickbox". It's Fluxbox with the menus and shortcuts specifically geared toward running KDE applications, especially konqueror.

My KDE friends, in fluxbox, or in any window manager, Konqueror really shines, because it's essentially KDE in a single application. It has application menus, it has a window for mounting removable media, it even has the desktop, since all desktop icons function in Konqueror (as they do in Dolphin)

Konqueror is universal. A lot of its virtues are redundant in the traditional KDE desktop, but it lends itself to a lot of great ideas if someone wants to be creative. I'm speaking of Konqueror in the 3.5 series here, but I'm sure Konqueror will be back to its old self eventually. I once started a thread in my favorite Linux forum entitled: "Have I told you lately that I love... Konqueror?"

However, I've been fooling around with a KDE4.1 Desktop, and I've really gained a lot of respect for Dolphin. It's hard to explain, but the impression I get is that Dolphin is made to work with the KDE4 desktop... and it just fits right in there. It's a thing of beauty.