I considered this for quite a while and still cannot see why I would ever do what you suggest. I think this is where a video screen grab is needed as sometimes these things can make far more sense when viewed in action.
I don't really know how to go about that, sorry.
This idea may work fine for you, but it just seems unecessary, I would simply tile the two images.
This may work for you, but ...
The fact that one is background and one foreground is irrelevant.
It's hardly irrelevant in GUIs where activating an image means that you have to pop it to the front, hiding whatever was in the other window.
You also said 'both [images] cannot be displayed at same time' How would you have this issue? As that sounds like a programme isue and not anOS issue.
Not having infinite screen real estate leads to this issue.
Granted, it's less of an issue with MacOS X since I started using a screen with 1920x1200 pixels of real estate. Plus, MacOS X has the nifty F9 and F10 shortcuts for providing an overview and easily selecting other application windows.
It's still Alt+Tab actually.
What you list below this is nothing new to me. Like I tried to tell earlier, I've been using Windows since it became publicly available. I'm not a newbie, okay?
I just found it clumsy and cumbersome, because I've also used something that's quicker and easier to use.
I can see how someone who
hasn't used something quicker and easier, or who doesn't care about those things, may think that the standard solution in e.g. Windows XP is good enough.
Enough good apps is the right number. Just Adobe software would suit most people. Not that that will ever happen.
LightZone, Bibble, jAlbum, Inkscape, Audacity, Evolution, Xfig, xv, ... it's a pretty long list of
good apps, most of them are Unix/X specific rather than Linux specific and may work on a Mac as well, some are cross-platform and work even on Windows. Some are amazingly good, but won't work under anything but X, which means that the market impact is low.
But you're right in that you won't get Microsoft Office or Adobe Creative Suite applications without quite some hassle. Some products that were pretty decent have been killed off, such as FrameMaker.
You win some, you lose some, and that's how it goes for most OS-es.
You might say that's why we've got VMWare, Parallels etc.
Anyway, it's been pretty clear to me for the past few posts that we're not on the same planet, so I'll stop whipping the dead horse now.