Still, I try to avoid GUI stuff and freedesktop stuff as much as possible (I do use a window manager, but not GNOME or KDE or whatever), and write better programs when possible, but a few things don't. I don't use any desktop environment at all. The web browser is one thing that isn't so good. Really, many things should be moved out of the web browser and made to work by simply nc, curl, etc. And some things work better with local programs, but others with remote, with whatever protocol is applicable e.g. IRC, NNTP, SMTP, etc, please.