Tired of staring at a cluttered Windows desktop filled with program icons, documents, and other shortcuts? There are two solutions: Give your desktop a thorough cleaning, or sweep everything under the rug. Emerge Desktop helps you do the latter.

In a nutshell, what Emerge Desktop does is replace the Windows shell. That means no more start menu, taskbar, or system tray. Those items are replaced with a clean, blank desktop. The only thing you'll notice running after installing Emerge Desktop is a replacement for the Windows system tray called emergeTray.

So how do you launch programs? In a very Linux-like fashion, you simply right-click on your desktop. A menu will pop up allowing you to find programs that are in your start menu, quick launch bar, or files and shortcuts that were hanging out on your Desktop.

If you already use a program launcher like RocketDock or Launchy, Emerge can help you effectively hide everything on your desktop while still providing a system tray. It did take me a few minutes to figure out how to change the transparency level for emergeTray or how to move it. The answer? Hold the Ctrl key while right clicking on it to bring up the edit or configure menus.

[via Lifehacker]