I think part of the problem is thinking that something *new* needs to be developed (e.g. hildon-desktop). The thing is fvwm can duplicate the entire home page easily, except for the desktop applets. fvwm has a task bar, menus, clock, system tray. If the apps people were writing just used the already standard tray rather than hildon, they would be just fine. In one bar across the top or side, I can have a system menu, a task bar (icons and/or text), a tray and clock. I have a fully functional keyboard, although I do not have word completion.

Changing the theme is simple in fvwm as well. It is trivial to make almost identical themes, in varying degrees of sizes to accommodate stylus, small and large fingers.

Just saying