I personally use a black desktop background - and a black shell background as well - as a way of establishing negative space. It feels much cleaner and less dis

I personally use a black desktop background - and a black shell background as well - as a way of establishing negative space. It feels much cleaner and less distracting than some of the other common backdrops I've seen: colorful wallpapers adding art to my desktop, semitransparent shells distracting me with what's behind them, and I'd be remiss without mentioning Aero on Windows, which turned the entire window stack, titlebars and all, into layers of transparencies.