... Windows and Apple is a really nice idea to me. Sadly, you'll find a lot of people on this page who are not creative at all and so try to copy the terrible style of those two systems.

That's true, and there are times I arrange things on my desktop to match that look. (I use Gnome. I'm still not familiar enough with KDE to get it to look like I want it.) However, I do so for either the sake of screen space like on my netbook, or if I know others will be using my machine for a short period of time who use those systems, or if I'm trying to ease the idea of transistioning for some people who are going from Windows or Mac to Linux. As for the graphic look of those systems, well, it's all a matter of taste if one either wants to stay with what they are used to visually or if they want to make theirs unique. The freedom I refer to is the freedom from proprietary software companies and making the machine the way you want it to both visually and functionally. That's why we all use Linux in the first place, right?