PixelGirlPresents.com
One of my all time favorite websites is Pixel Girl Presents.  The site offers a huge collection of great looking desktop backgrounds, icons and some tutorials and articles relating to design.  The desktops and icons are created by independent artists and therefore there is a huge variety on offer.  Make sure you also check out the Pixel Girl Shop which features products from indendent designers as well.

YellowIcon.com
Yellow Icon is similar to PixelGirlPresents but it only offers Icons.   All of the icons look great and are submitted by the community and yellow staff.   The site has over 30 pages of free icons for all operating systems.   Yellow Icon is free from advertising and the clean design makes it a breeze to quickly find and download quality desktop icons

InterfaceLift.com
Interface lift features a range of icons an windows themes.  The desktops seem mostly to be photographic but they do have a nice slection of icons.  The major downfall of Interface Lift is the quantity of advertising!

David Lanham
This designers website features a good selection of quality desktops and icons.  He also offers you the opportunity to purchase any of the desktops as a print.  Free of advertising and easy to navigate through, this site is great!

 This is part one of our free desktops and icons series.  The next part will be available next week.  If you know of any sites that should be covered in this section then make sure you let us know using the comment feature below