I am the opposite and I absolutely hate it when I have to work on someone's laptop with cluttered desktop and folders. Mine only has a taskbar at bottom and clock widget at bottom right corner. All temporary files goes to downloads or to organised directories. What's the point of having a nice wallpaper if you can't enjoy it.
Everything from start menu shortcuts. Much cleaner and nicer that way.
Edit: I am using KDE plasma so not the full screen start menu like in windows but the small box on bottom left with about 15 icons that I regularly use.