is there some place on these forums/posts that better explains how desktop views w/ Maemo 5 work? (i did a search but came up w/ nothing) b/c as I gather you have 4 different views possible. my n900 came w/ all 4 checked. whenever I uncheck any one, all my icons on my customized desktop disappear when I return to the desktop--even when I recheck all 4 desktop views again--and I can't get them back w/out manually adding each icon, widget, etc. back again. of course, the real problem is that I likely don't understand how this feature works. seems like it should be pretty simple, even for a relative noob like myself.

Have you tried swiping left and right on the desktop to see the other views?

Yes, the icons disappear if you disable a view then later reenable it. Please vote for https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5741 if this annoys you. (Please click the Vote link, don't add a "me too"-type comment).

ah-ha. that explains it then. (and, yeah, tried that).

You might also want to look at the Activity Manager app (probably still in extras-devel though) which allows switching between desktop setups (saving the number of desktops & icon/widget layout for each).

In fact it is in extras-testing and it is one-vote away from extras.

Not any more

Now it's heading for extras :-)