You can made this in folder if you sort it manually.

Seems a good idea, but nautilus developper have maybe a good reason to this
behaviour.

This causes further bugs:
* volumes (removable media and network drives and whatever comes to mind) get
mounted in a totally messy way if you already have a few icons on your desktop.
* new files created by external applications (for example, a tar.gz downloaded
from your favorite web browser) get positionned half OFF the screen, although
there is still space available, or they just overlap current icons
* my mom can "miss" the trash when she tries to dump a file into it.

perhaps related to bug 330298

I regularly see desktop icons being placed on top of others (usually representing devices/volumes). This is a shame as it's very obvious and doesn't present a good image of Linux to any Windows user I seek to convince!

Not related to 330298 in my opinion,
It still happens in gnome 2.22.1

Created attachment 114529 [details]
96x96, top-left to bottom-right, showing grid

Created attachment 114530 [details]
96x96, top-left to bottom-right, without a grid (lots of whitespace)

Shouldn't there be an invisible grid that all shortcuts, folders and images should snap to? Like Windows 95-Vista, XFCE and KDE. Maybe the grid could be 96x96 and start from top-left to bottom-right, with the allowance of the user to edit the values through gConf?

I've attached a mockup showcasing a 96x96 grid running top-left to bottom-right, with automatic snapping. By default, the user should be able to place their icons wherever they want, OR make it automatic according to the numbers dictated in my mockup.

Then, when text is too long, wrap it at 96px on the x axis and hide it on the y axis.

It is clear that the concept of a desktop grid is an idea that many users want and are familiar with. Every major desktop environment defaults to that. And it shouldn't be hard to implement, as nautilus file manager already organizes items in a grid.
There is no use case when a user wants to have his icons overlap.

After reading up on this issue, its not that Nautilus doesn't have the concept of a grid, it's just that when you set it to arrange icons manually there is no "snap-to-grid" option.  Also the size of the grid is not configurable.

Am I right that a "snap-to-grid" feature would solve this (and numerous) other problems?

Even if you don't create a "snap-to-grid" feature, placing new icons on the desktop by plugging in removable media and the like should *never* overlap other icons.  In my opinion, users should be able to overlap them if they really want to, but placing icons automatically should not cause a headache trying to find the hidden icon that's being overlapped by another one.

While this bug appears to be low priority at first, it must be taken into account that every single user will see it and grimace.  It's not one that can easily be ignored and it is one that continues to frustrate after you know it's there, even though initially it appears minor.

I agree that a snap-to-grid feature is very desirable. A big problem in this context is however that thumbnailed items have a size which is very different from the rest of the icons.

- I agree that a snap-to-grid feature is very desirable. A big problem in this
- context is however that thumbnailed items have a size which is very different
- from the rest of the icons.

Yes, there should be a grid with fixed length and width for each icon cell (it shouldn't allow icons overlapping, too). When a folder full of images is opened, and you go immediately to the bottom, you see that Nautilus hasn't finished to load all the icons yet, it's still loading them. And worst, if you are already at the bottom, the variable height icons load process makes the file browser go back somewhere up the folder, and you have to scroll down to the bottom again. Nautilus should load all the fixed-size cells grid, and then load the thumbnails, just like Dolphin or Windows Explorer do.

The irregular icons load on folders with a lot of icons also causes the address bar to not be properly updated. If you are at a folder with a lot of icons and they haven't been fully loaded, and you navigate to other folder, the address bar still shows the previous folder. This happens on Nautilus 2.22.5.1.

i have this problem in jaunty jackalope with gnome 2.26, I think that before making new features we have to make the actual ones perfect, and fix every bug.

Created attachment 133507 [details]
Bug case

Oh I know the use case for overlaping things ^_^'

"i have this problem in jaunty jackalope with gnome 2.26, I think that before
making new features we have to make the actual ones perfect, and fix every bug."

That's my opinion too, but in the Linux world people are only busy devloping new features, while very critical bugs just won't be fixed, even after more than 8 years.

(In reply to comment #13)
> And worst, if you
> are already at the bottom, the variable height icons load process makes the
> file browser go back somewhere up the folder, and you have to scroll down to
> the bottom again. Nautilus should load all the fixed-size cells grid, and then
> load the thumbnails, just like Dolphin or Windows Explorer do.
> 

I agree completely.  Browsing a folder of photos (like when I plug in my digital camera) is painfully unusable until every single preview has loaded.  Loading every icon in a grid would fix that.  Changing the maximum height of a preview to match that of a standard icon would take care of this problem, too.  If users want to see bigger previews they can always use the zoom buttons, but I guess that's a bit off topic.

I also disagree that this bug be considered "minor."  It affects both appearance and usability, and would never go unfixed for so long in a major commercial product.

I am thinking of filing a separate bug, for the fact that "desktop icons are placed by default on top of each other". This default behavior, I think, is wrong in everyone's eyes. Am I right?

For clarity:

1. type 'cd ~/Desktop'
2. type 'touch one && touch two && touch three'

>I agree that a snap-to-grid feature is very desirable. A big problem in this
context is however that thumbnailed items have a size which is very different
from the rest of the icons.

Why not have fixed icons and previews size (or variable but for all icons on desktop) like in KDE, Windows, MacOSX?

I did some work to try to fix this by working with the code in nautilus_icon_container.c. I have attached my most recent patch at https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=601469

hi,
I don't think that the priority should be normal or the severity minor because this is a simple thing that any desktop user would be surprised to see work in this way

I think more attention should be made to those simple things as we are talking about Linux Desktop not servers.

[Bumping version number as per comment 15]

This bug is still present even after the transition to gnome 3!

Seeing this on ubuntu oneiric 11.10.

Still experiencing this bug (7 years old now) of desktop icons stacking/overlapping on the latest daily build of Ubuntu Precise 12.04.

Is the nautilus desktop abandoned?

(In reply to comment #25)
> Is the nautilus desktop abandoned?

Sure, as gnome-shell has been the default GNOME desktop interface for a year now and having Nautilus render the desktop is disabled by default.

We've had this shit for 8 years now, this reeks of corruption.

I wouldn't be surprised if somebody is paying off high placed developpers to divert manpower to other things and maintain small but important flaws. 

This bug is one of the biggest newbie turn-offs I know about.

Microsoft would lose milions every year if ubuntu went mainstream. It's natural to assume they'd legally but discretely pay off some people as part of risk managment(typical in economy) and important unsolved bugs like this one are proof of this.

!

I've been rumbled.
But them microsoft dollars were worth it

(In reply to comment #28)
> !
> 
> I've been rumbled.
> But them microsoft dollars were worth it

Quiet - the conspiracy must remain secret.  Admins, can anyone please remove this admission? We're all at risk of losing our funding here.  Thanks.

Damned, I'm unmasked!

I have to admit: 8 years ago, people at Microsoft were holding a secret meeting and saying: "That Ubuntu will conquer the world. We have to stop it!"

But how. Then someone has an idea:

"Let's make sure that they can put icons on top of each other on the desktop."


And thus, they spend millions secretely paying random GNOME people, telling them: "Be sure that people can still put icons on top of each other."

And it worked…

For 8 years, millions of people tried Ubuntu and then, at some point, realized: "hey, but icons can be put on top of each other! F** this shit and let's go to Windows". That's why it is still a niche market.


I've to admit. It's partly my fault. I'm not proud of it. But, as I'm writing from the beach next to my Bahamas's house I've reached with my private plane, I don't really care.

(In reply to comment #27)
> Microsoft would lose milions every year if ubuntu went mainstream. It's natural
> to assume they'd legally but discretely pay off some people as part of risk
> managment(typical in economy) and important unsolved bugs like this one are
> proof of this.

As you have not submitted a patch to fix this either, I can only assume that you're part of the conspiracy.

TheHappyMarquis: 

For the last year by default there have not been any icons on the GNOME desktop (as Nautilus does not draw the desktop anymore by default, except for using fallback mode). 
Things normally go faster if you provide a patch.

Please read https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html and https://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct before adding further comments, and keep comments technical and post conspiracy theories in a random forum but NOT in this bugtracker.

I'm more talking about the whole desktop thing like comment 8, as in no grid.

I'm serious about this being one of the biggest newbie turn-offs I know about.

The windows 95 desktop has a better desktop than ubuntu has, if that ain't wrong then idk what is.

But I'm out of place here as nautilus has nothing to do with this anymore I guess, so excuse me for my out of place comment.

P.S.: @Daniel, the fix for this was made way back, Kubuntu for example has a perfectly working grid system on the desktop. I was talking about nobody implementing the exact same piece of code to the ubuntu version. It just isn't normal after all these years.

*** Bug 593767 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 641104 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 641520 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 154722 ***