Oh - but i LIKE the roxified desktop!!! Mostly, i am constantly thinking of those i introduce Linux to. They kinda get lost without those familiar desktop icons...although certainly icewm looks kinda familiar even without them.
I like the earlier suggestion of having options at bootup to pick whether or not to use the panel. I once tried another distro (Vector Live, i forget which version) that had several wm options at the login screen, including:
icewm
roxified icewm
fluxbox
roxified fluxbox
I only say this because it was great to be able to choose from several preconfigured window managers and have every one of them working correctly "out of the box." Since i was less familiar with the various desktop environments then, i booted into one and tried it, logged out, tried the next, etc. It was great and i quickly found one i liked!
So there, i've said it (again!) -- my two bits. My next stop is to download and test the antiX-KDElite version. (Probably i will find it even more newbie-friendly since it's KDE.)
Now that i am voting for more work and headaches for anticapitalista, maybe antiX could come with all that complicated tweaking already done so users can have both the icons AND conky going at the same time. (I could donate some bottles of Exedrin...

)
Kidding aside, you are doing really cool stuff! It is wonderful to have so many choices in the Mepis family. Thank you!