I am currently working to create a very useful desktop for myself, at the expense of usability for others :P Here is a quick shot showing off the window manager (I use xmonad, which is a tiling window manager). I also have fluxbox and XFCE 4.10 installed, but I rarely use them. I also have a KDE desktop machine, but I don't have access to it atm. Oh, and windows just wastes disk space :P I see you use linux mint, probably 9. Do you like it?
Another lifetime ago when all I did was from the CLI, I used ion as my window manager. I used Fluxbox for sometime and am a big fan of XFCE. You are correct. It is LM, but it is LM 13. I decided to give it a try since I've been hearing very good things about it. So far, I am not disappointed. Cinnamon is not too bad.
I like LM too. I used 9 and 10, but I got fed up with having to reinstall my system every 6 months in order to get newer software (I dislike the fixed release cycle in general). I wanted to have more control, up to date software and know what made my OS tick, so I went the Arch Way. The only way to have more control is Gentoo (Maybe I'll try this later) or building everything yourself. Linux Mint is nice, especially if you are coming from Windows or want Linux that just works. And no forced GNOME 3 is also nice.