Ubuntu Wiki

• Created: Date(2005-09-29T13:53:43Z) by JohnNilsson

• Contributors: JohnNilsson

• Interested: MatthewPaulThomas

• Status: UbzSpecification, BrainDump, DistroSpecification

• Packages affected: nautilus

Summary

Nautilus currently defaults to ${HOME}/Desktop/ as the Desktop folder. It is however possible to configure nautilus to have ${HOME}/ as the Desktop. This specification is about having this as default.

• MarkShuttleworth: I'm strongly opposed to this idea. One of the tough decisions we took early on was to keep the Desktop free of clutter. That is impossible to do if you give the user nowhere to put information EXCEPT the desktop, which is exactly the consequence of making the desktop and $HOME synonymous. By all means continue work on this spec, and make a case that I and others will consider, but since I have strong views on it I thought it best to comment immediately.

  JohnNilsson: This i going to be hard in other words. If keeping the desktop uncluttered is so important another option would be to simply not run nautilus on the root window. I on the other hand thinks an uncluttered desktop is a useless desktop. With something else than the WIMP paradigm I'd probably drop the dektop too. I strongly encourage people to try it out for a few days. The effect is amazing.

  LionelDricot :

• The problem : There is a big problem in the current desktop paradigm, problem we've herited from Windows : icons on the desktop can be Applications launcher or document. And there is no way to know what an icon is without clicking on it. Also, it's difficult to understand that files on your desktop are "above" you "Home" folder, as you can see on the desktop (Home folder is itself part of the desktop) but, once in the file selector (or in a nautilus window), it's the desktop folder wich is part of the Home folder ! Wich one is at the top ? (When I discovered Win98, it tooks me a month to understand that there was nothing to understand. It was only pure non-sens).

• My personnal experience : My personnal use is the following : My desktop is my $HOME, where I have differents folders : "Images", Texts", "Projects", "University". Each folder has his own emblem. That make my desktop look really nice and I have always all I want one click away. When I temporary download things, I put them on my desktop so I don't forget to remove them immediatly. I was used to move all my home folder in a backup_folder every 3 months, because my home folder was full of craps, unusable, full of folders. With the discovery of "$HOME==Desktop", I work now with the same desktop since Warty ! Unbelievebale ! I feared a cluttered desktop and I gained an ordered $HOME !

• Put it as default ?And I highly recommend this option as a default since it's a good (I didn't say "better") default. No need to choose between "desktop" and "home" in the Gtk-file-selector. It appears to be simply easier (you remove one concept so it's easier). People that don't understand gconf can even create a folder in this HOME and call it "My Documents" without interfering with anything. But there is maybe a lot of things I didn't think about...

Rationale

The users view of the data organization is currently split it two. For most users the desktop is the base of their personal data organization. When using a file selector for opening and saving files a level below the desktop is introduced, which is inaccessible in ordinary use.

By configuring nautilus to use the home dir as desktop all files the user has access to is availible from the Desktop.

Use cases

• John is a routine Linux user but he is very bad at organizing files. By having everything on the desktop it's impossible for him ignore the problem and stuff gets organized in a more timley manner. As a bonus he is completley aware of what files he has in his home folder.
• Sandra is a novice user who, besides web surfing, uses her computer to organize and store photos from her digital camera and from time to time create a document in an office application. She gets confused when she is importing files from the camera because she can't find them on the desktop. When sending files to friends with e-mails she get confused because the files in the file selector doesn't resemble the one on her desktop and she has trouble finding what she wants.

Implementation

Ship Nautilus with the gconf setting /apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_is_home_dir enabled.

Outstanding issues

• Applications that assume the presense of a ${HOME}/Desktop/ dir have to be fixed.

• Applications that install non .dot-files and directories in ${HOME} have to be handled. Examples (I think): Crossover Office, Realplayer, Opera (creates OperaDownloads by default), some games.

• Might vastly accelerate the accumulation of clutter on users' Desktops and actually hinder them more than aid them in conveniently and effectively organizing their files.

  • >>>>>[Comment: This was and is my concern about this method; speaking for myself, I use Home and Desktop for different purposes - and keep the ammount of stuff on Desktop to a minimum. I cannot see any reason for all my Home folders to be cluttering up my Desktop. If this option is enabled in future Ubuntu releases, it must be easy to disable on a global/complete basis, not just on a case-by-case basis as suggested in the comment below.]<<<<<<

    • - ["Madpilot"] (Friday, October 21 2005)
• How to differentiate better between data which is actively handled by the users on their own and data which "just belongs" to them, but is normally handled automatically by applications? Further rethinking of the problem might be required.

  • >>>>>[Possible solution: Add a "Hide this" entry to context mennu. Which would add the file to a .hidden file. (If you have any opinions on my AnnotationStyle, by all means create a page for it)]<<<<<<

    • - JohnNilsson (Friday, October 21 2005)

BoF agenda and discussion