This is the way.
Good god. Putting stuff in the desktop is a big yuck. Your desktop probably looks like your room.
If a cluttered desktop is a sign of a cluttered mind, what does an empty one signify?
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The visitor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself, “it is overfull, no more will go in!”.
“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “your desktop is full of documents and shortcuts. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
Zen
I alternate between a cluttered and empty desktop.
Ride the waves
Can confirm.
take it back
No
Right. Why have an easy to locate area to quickly access temporary files, amiright?
yeah like a downloads folder
Not every temp file is downloaded.
indeed, some are documents
The desktop is like the inbox of files, inbox-zero it and it’s a tidy place to keep things in focus until they’re sorted and filed away or deleted.
Your desktop probably looks like your room.
What is “your room”? Which room?
The padded one.
That’s my comfort room
Least cluttered Windows Desktop:
Pffff, if you don’t attach to the grid you got way more space for files.
Gotta arrange by penis
If anybody needs me, I’ll be here for the next half hour or so.
…there’s no “sort by penis”…
Can you sort this by penis? Internet Explorer needs to be at the tip or I won’t be able to find it.
Thank you so much for this, setting this as my wallpaper right now.
Aww, I love TWID! Thanks for the reminder, haven’t watched it in awhile
Oh, that’s easy to clean up. Just open explorer, go to desktop, Ctrl+A, Ctrl+X, make a new folder called 2025-Jan, and then inside of that folder, Ctrl+V. Problem solved, forever.
Where was that file? Oh, My Documents/Old Desktops/2023 November/2023 April/2022 December. Of course.
There is a folder in my (Linux) desktop called “Old Desktop”
There’s a folder inside “Old Desktop” called… “Old Desktop”.
Are you me? Haha recently I went looking through them and was appalled. Not enough to actually do anything about it though.
Man, zooming in and looking at these icons was like a blast from the (not too far) past.
Where’s Bonzi Buddy?
The cursed Linux alternative of this is usually putting things directly in the home folder – I used to do this until I got better. Desktop is simple to keep clean when you don’t have one in your “desktop environment” by default.
Some people who’ve used MacOs before OSX dump everything to the root filesystem out of habit. It works just as poorly as a file management strategy as one might expect, albeit better than putting everything on the desktop. Not sure how often that happens but I’ve known multiple people to do that.
For some reason I hate the idea of just dropping everything in the Home folder, yet Downloads just ends up becoming exactly that anyway lol
People who save files on the desktop deserve to use Windows.
If the “shopping trolley test” determines good versus evil, then where you save your files determines lawful vs chaotic.
Lawful Good - Saved in specific places
Lawful Evil - Saved in recycle bin
Neutral Good - Saved in downloads
Neutral Evil - Saved in downloads or documents but you’re not sure which one
Chaotic Good - Everything goes on desktop
Chaotic Evil - Everything goes into a random location
New alignment: Chaotic Lawful: I deleted my desktop folder to prevent me from cluttering the desktop
The top of your desk is exactly where you want the document that you will need in a minute to go. Its what bosses demanded since before modern computing
If that is not the intended usecase, then what is?
In linux i am saving stuff in a related project folder which may aswell be that projects own desktop.
Save to documents surely? It’s a document
I didn’t think that any Windows related software was actually aware that the ‘Documents’ folder is supposed to be for documents. Because my ‘Documents’ folder gets used as a dumping ground for any old program to drop their shit in. Even though there’s literally dedicated folders for app data and saved games.
Personally I make my own ‘Home’ folder with my own pictures, movies, documents etc. folders because whether it’s Windows, Linux or Android, the concept of having your own user folder for your own things is a joke because developers don’t respect that and just dump their files anywhere.
I don’t use the Documents folder because of that reason, but it’s still weird to me that that doesn’t happen on Linux, so my Documents folder is mostly empty there
Yeah, documents itself isn’t bad but you still end up with a bunch of stuff just being chucked into the root of your user folder, despite the fact that folders like ‘.config’ exist. Personally, I like my ‘home’ space to be just my files, things that I’ve put there myself, without random programs making new folders and leaving dotfiles lying around. I’m a bit of a neat freak on my pc, way more than in real life. Personally, /home is just another /etc for me. My shit goes elsewhere.
I actually really like this and when I reconfigure my laptop I might implement the same thing
Yeah Documents is basically default for .local config save data trash for any and all programs and games, which is a bummer. I’d like to use it for documents lol.
OneDrive documents --> PC documents --> desktop
why must I press so many buttons to get it where I want :/All IT support immediately revoked.
On Android it’s similar… On some apps(all?) you can’t save to the downloads folder. Like WTF? Downloads is where temp stuff goes you damn green buffoon!
As a long time Android user, this comment is not aligned with my experience at all
Well, has been like this on Android 10, 14 and now I’m on 15 so idk. Also searched online and Google says it’s a “security feature”.
Never seen this. Seems like you selected the option to only allow this app to save to specific folders?
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
Why not disable apps going to your homescreen instead?
Same. I hate desktop clutter. The horrors I’ve seen when I’ve been on someone else’s PC. Random documents that haven’t been touched in 5 years. Why?!
Even aside from looking ugly, it’s not even a good place for apps/files! If you have a window or two open, everything is obscured and you have to move windows out of the way to access your stuff.
They get a lot of shit for it, but IMO Gnome was 100% right to say “No. The desktop inevitably becomes a dumping ground and we don’t want that. Your app menu is for apps and your Home folder is for files. We have very good search functionality to find what you want. No desktop icons. If you want that, install an extension.”
The reason I don’t use Gnome is “We don’t want that” Okay, and just who the fuck is ‘we?’
“We” is obviously the hard-working developers who predominantly work on Gnome unpaid. The people who provide the software for free.
Literally every project makes decisions on what their vision is and enacts it. Gnome is no different.
If you don’t like a piece of software, don’t use it. Nobody is forcing you to use it.
Frankly, you sound entitled. They aren’t obliged to make their project to the way you want it. Especially not when you’re getting it for free. Entitlement like that is the biggest cancer in the FOSS community, IMO.
Hmm, GNOME pays developers. There’s a team of full time employees steering GNOME, and staff. Sure they are a non-profit, but it’s a bit romanticizing to claim that they are doing all that work for free. I don’t think it is very nice or productive to call people names and gatekeeping FOSS this way. There’s such a thing as customization. It’s fine that GNOME is very opinionated (everyone accepts that they are and the project lead has said so time and time again that user choice is not part of their focus). But, at the same time, it’s not their project, there’s a complex governance structure that involves the community. It’s contradictory to speak this way about a component of a Linux distro. Linux is philosophically underlined by freedom of choice and personal customization, and it’s inappropriate to insult people for wanting some more of that.
No, no, no.
Some developers do some paid work. The majority is unpaid.
I never said they did all of the work for free. Same goes for other projects.
Yes, it is their project. They own it. It’s theirs. They are the developers.
Linux is philosophically underlined by freedom of choice and personal customization
And Gnome doesn’t go against any of that. You are free to not use it. They aren’t forcing you. You are free to customise it. They aren’t stopping you.
Please stop acting so entitled. This is software they are providing for free, the bulk of the work being unpaid. They don’t have to do free work for your specific needs if they don’t want to. It’s their project.
I never insulted you. If my words hurt, then I’m sorry, my intention is not to hurt you.
I’m just trying to steer you away from the path you’re on of thinking you’re entitled to XYZ and some predominantly unpaid devs have to cater to your whims. They do not. It’s their project, not yours, and they rightly call the shots.
Sure, all those things could be argued to some degree or another. Just don’t call people cancer. Throwing insults devalues your argument.
I never called you cancer, or insulted you.
See:
Entitlement like that is the biggest cancer in the FOSS community, IMO.
I said feeling like the devs owe you something is entitlement, which is a cancer to the FOSS world. You aren’t owed anything, and neither am I.
Nowhere did I say you were cancer, unless you happen to proudly identify as an extremely entitled person.
Like I said, sorry if my words hurt you, but you aren’t entitled to have the devs carer to you specifically. The project is theirs and if you don’t like it, fork it or use something else. That’s what FOSS is all about.
The availability of extensions for everything is the true power of Gnome for me. They got most things right but I love being able to tweak every little detail to my exact liking
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.
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
Yeah, desktop as the temp location is great for a few reasons.
I can easily see what is in the queue.
It reminds me to do something about it.
I can rearrange the dozen or so icons for fun when I am having trouble picking what to do. Kind of like inventory management in an rpg.
When I hit about 15 it prompts me to clear the list by either finishing them or putting them all away so I can start again with a clear screen.
Iirc, there’s an extension to allow for desktop icons? I may be misremembering, it might be a setting somewhere. Either way, I’m sure you can do it.
People who use desktop as your unsorted downloads folder, who hurt you?
I use the desktop as a very temporary folder. Because I’ll be annoyed by having stuff on there and will delete them as soon as I don’t need them any more.
My downloads folder has random installers from 2021.
As god intended (sorted by downloaded date)
Idgaf as long as it isn’t onedrive.
OneDrive can be configured to automatically back up your desktop. So the desktop might be OneDrive
