I absolutely do it the other way. Nothing is on my desktop except for the trash bin. There is a shortcut to the file explorer and browser pinned to the task bar. And that's it.
There is nothing at all on my desktop except for a text document created by my girlfriend saying that she loves me that she snuck on there when I wasn’t looking.
Taskbar is all you need. Also, the windows/meta button, then just typing (or if you're in KDE, literally just typing) the thing I want to do and hitting enter. Fuck desktop icons.