I love GNOME for this. No desktop icons. Windows/super key, type the first letter or two, boom. It's so pretty.
My phone on the other hand? The first screen is nicely arranged. The second screen is just a chronological list of the apps I've downloaded, because they automatically go to desktop, and they'll clutter up my home screen if I don't have a separate sacrificial screen for them
This is actually the one thing I hate about GNOME. I keep a nearly fully empty desktop but I like having one as sort of a staging ground for temp files. I like just being able to chuck a file there and then drag it into another program, all without having nautilus open
This is exactly how I use KDE, but without the GNOME look, which I am not a fan of. You don't even need to hit meta first in KDE, you can just start typing if you have krunner on.