Current Unix desktop environments lack a unified file system -like representation of the system resources. In the Windows operating system, users can access all the system resources from the ``My Computer'' folder which acts as the root of the operating system shell's ``namespace''. This means that the control panel, the printer's spool, the trashcan, the removeable devices and so on are all accessible through the same simple ``point-and-click'' mechanism within the same application (Explorer.exe). Unlike the current Unix desktop environments, users don't need to deal with different applications for the various objects that are in their computer: they can just use the desktop shell.
To implement similiar functionality on Unix, we would need to have an extensible mechanism for providing the contents to these virtual folders and implementing operations that can be performed on them.