KDE bug report is here: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48555

If we do decide to move to ~/Desktop as the gnome desktop directory we
should also make the default file selector directory ~/Desktop as well.

I think we should move to ~ for the desktop. I think both theory and
in the long run practical experience has supported that it makes the
Desktop a much more useful construct. It makes sense for novices, and
it definitely promotes use of the desktop by long time Unix users.

I think that battle is too hard to fight - you can only fight so many
too-hard battles at a time, and we already used a ton of "hard points"
on button order and stripping down the window manager.

At least, you're going to have to keep the preference for now, and 
so we still need to change what happens in non-~ mode.

ccing other usability people

I've passed saturation point on listening to the arguments for and
against on this one, I think... we really ought to do a decent
usability study on it if we're looking for a definitive answer :)

I think calum has a point and that user testing is needed. Simply 
switching to ~/Desktop for the sake of coexisiting with kde is lame. 
Usability should be our prime concern. 

Also just for the sake of mentioning it, if jan and mine's 
preferences proposal gets approved the preference for changing the 
desktop dir will no longer be in the ui (it will only be available 
through gconf).

Entering into the flames:
Using $home to me makes much more sense and seems pretty similar to 
how windows uses the desktop. At least pre-winxp the desktop was your 
user workspace and included all your relevant folders (my documents, 
my network places etc.). 

Also adding a home link to the desktop does create a weird cycling 
issue. For instance you open your home folder from the desktop and 
than can open your desktop folder from the home folder, from which 
you can open your home folder again and on. that seems wierd to me.

Note that the desktop folder is a third-party application interface.
e.g. file selectors display it, apps might offer to install themselves
there, etc.

Anything that's a third-party interface in this way has to be shared
GNOME/KDE or you bind apps to a specific desktop, which is 
unacceptable. So if we are going to be different from KDE, we must 
at least agree on some way to ask "what is the desktop folder
for the current environment?" so apps can do that - but personally I
don't think there's any way the usability gains from ~/Desktop vs.
just ~ are going to be large enough to outweigh the interoperability
issue and the complexity of having it configurable.

Of course, I think the same thing about button order.

We aren't living in a vacuum chamber guys; people run Mozilla and
OpenOffice and KDevelop and CrossOver Office and all kinds of
non-GNOME stuff. You've got to look at usability in that context.

In any case, yes a usability test would help. Certainly it would help 
settle the issue within GNOME, and it'd also help if you want to 
try to convince the KDE guys to change.

>Note that the desktop folder is a third-party application interface.
>e.g. file selectors display it, 

All the reason more to use $home, its already the default dir in
pretty much every unix app (mozilla, open office etc.) for saving
files etc. I think we are think of overall unix usability. 

>apps might offer to install themselves there, etc.

This is one of the single most annoying parts of windows. Users hate
this and we should not encourage it. Microsoft has even realized this
in XP.

*** Bug 75180 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Hi Guys,

There are a couple of really good reasons for $home to be the default
desktop directory in my mind.  The first is that it's simply a lot
more conceptually easy to understand.  with a ~/Desktop directory,
you'll have a link inside that directory to your home directory, which
basically makes it cyclical in nature.  For a user trying to figure
out where infact the desktop directory is in relation to the home
directory, this is a pretty confusing idea.

Similarly, splitting home and desktop into two distinct entities is
rather confusing in and of itself.  Is my desktop directory my "home"
so to speak or is "home"?  How do we explain to new users what the
difference is?  Relating to that same question, what essentially is
the desktop?  Is it supposed to be the users "root" directory so to
speak?  How should users (especially new users) regard their desktop?
 Similarly, if a user is trying to access files stored in the desktop
directory from other UIs (say the CLI, or from a samba or netatalk
share of $home), how should they access the desktop directory.  

I guess it seems like there are really a lot of unansewered questions
in my mind, and if I'm confused (as a poweruser/amateur developer) how
are new users going to feel?  I really think making $home the default
desktop gets around many of these issues.  It's solid, it's concrete.
 It doesn't require wierd circular links.  

Nite_Hawk

I remember when I wanted to make a link (in the shell) to my desktop.
I had to figure which directory it was using. I found this very
confusing. Because it was a dot-directory (hidden) it didn't make it
any easier. Off course I am experienced enough to find it, but newbies
will certainly get even more confused and maybe just give up.

Since I bumped into this have been using my home-dir as my desktop,
and I will never return to the previous situation. In my opinion this
should be the default, and shouldn't even be user-configurable (See 
#48116 for good arguments on this)

I've used $HOME as my desktop for over a year now and have found it
far preferable to ~/.deskotp or ~/Desktop for many reasons.

First, as mentioned above, it improves interoperability with apps like
Mozilla because it means they default to saving on the desktop.

As for KDE interoperation, it would be weird to have a Desktop
directory on the desktop. OTOH, symlinking ~/Desktop -> ~ would make
KDE and Gnome  behave consistantly. That's not a great solution, though.

One option would be to use $GNOME_DESKTOP and then let the user
deside. Granted that would be a configuration option, but that could
leave it up to the admin. That's also not a great solution.

1. I just so happend to have written an essay on this topic, and i
came across this bug so i thought i'd post a link:
http://linuxserver.serveftp.net/linux/abstract/index.html

2. Havoc's point is a valid one, we need to be sure changing to use ~
as desktop would not have a negative effect on our interactions with
other programs. However in my experience programs like mozilla that
default to ~ in their file picker actually interact better than before
without needing to be changed in any way. This is because i now have
access to not only my home folder but my desktop as well.

Part of the reason why it works well with mozilla is that it has
filtering in the file picker so launchers dont show up. Until gnome
has a file picker with filtering this would be an anoyance.

Created attachment 12465 [details]
examples of mozilla,gnome and opeoffice file dialogs showing a $home/desktop

Adding bugsquad keyword to get it off the radar-screen for the
bugsquad-team.

It's a simple fact that not all the stuff that go into $HOME should
also be on the "Desktop". One simply cannot ignore that fact and hide
them by prepending their names with a dot. Using ~/Desktop is elegant.
(I'm a gnome2 user and I've never used KDE but I came up with that
idea independently). It's what differentiates a Unix home dir from a
Gnome2 desktop. Heck, even Microsoft uses $HOME/Documents and
Settings/My Desktop (or whatever)

At any rate, it should be easy to modify Mozilla and OpenOffice to
make them Gnome2 "apps" defaulting to ~/Desktop (though I still
wouldn't). And any app written using Gnome2 libs would support in
intrinsically

I have to agree that having the gnome desktop a hidden directory
(.gnome-desktop) is very poor.  On the other hand, I don't think
having $HOME as the desktop directory is the right answer either
(though perhaps better).

My main reason for opposing this is that most users I know do show
hidden folders.  $HOME has tradtionally been the place to hold
settings files (I know GNOME is switching to gconf, but what about
.bashrc et. al).  The second arguement for not doing it that way comes
down to the choice thing.  What if people don't want My Documents on
the desktop?  I think Desktop (or GNOME-Desktop), My Documents, and
whatever else gets considered "mandatory" should be at equal levels
directly under $HOME.  Then allow the user the option to put a link to
"My Documents" or whatever on their desktop.

I guess my big concern is that on a well set up system the user should
only be able to modify files in their $HOME.  What happens when
someone wants something that they don't want on the desktop?  With the
$HOME being the desktop, that's no longer an option.  I don't want
more than 5 icons on my desktop, yet I could easy see things like
Trash, Music, Documents, Programming Projects, Music Projects, Video
Projects... good god I could fill up both monitors of my dual monitor
setup ;)

My other big problem is see with this system is that you would end up
"forcing" (at least nudging) the user to organize their files in the
way you want them to.  I don't think this is the correct approach.

Anybody commenting on the relative merit of $HOME or arbitrary
subdirectory as desktop should have tried BOTH options for atleast a
week or two, isn't that reasonable?

Originally a sceptic, now I would defy anyone to try using $HOME as
their desktop for a week or two and not love it -- it just seems so
much more orthogonal and logical. I think having $HOME as the
_standard_ desktop dir would be a huge fillip for gnome usability.

This bug is IMHO invalid: see bug 105525

*** Bug 105525 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Hidden files are never shown on the desktop AFAIK. You would have
to open up a nautilus window on $HOME to view hidden files there.

I noticed that RedHat 9 seemes to have disabled the Home-directory-as-
desktop feature (or maybe I just can't find it). That scared me, 
because I really like it, and do wish it was the default.

afaik the setting is hidden upstream, there aren't Red Hat patches 
for this. it should be in gconf-editor.

Current CVS have this changed to ~/Desktop. There has been lots of
flamewars about $home vs this, but the decision has beed made.

working fine, closing