For those who like to store things on the desktop

[Steve]

Not picking sides …just a good article from “how to geek”
https://www.howtogeek.com/871951/you-sh ... heres-why/

[dings]

Thanks for the link.

In my opinion, just use what works. We have good habits (good for us) and bad habits (bad for us). Some recommendations might be helpful. But there is no iron principle out there in the universe to never or always use the desktop.

[davidy]

It's all relative. Depends on how rich you are (how big IS your desk?) and how much stuff you have lying around. Generally speaking I totally disagree with howtogeek. If your pc crashes, if you use system restore (windows) or timeshift (linux) the first things to disappear will be anything on the desk after the restore point. However for many that have but a single hd on their system this point is moot and then only a secondary partition may save your files. Plus since I have a penchant for wallpapers the last thing I need is a butt-ton of junk obscuring my view.

[wdscharff]

Since things are a bit different with Fluxbox, that's another issue.
With MX you also use MX-snapshot, timeshift is not even "half the battle", then nothing is lost during a restore, unless I set it that way.
My current desktop (dual monitor operation) consists of a few concys on the WQHD and the UHD is empty ...

[rokytnji.1]

My autistic grandson prefers this kind of setup so I gave it to him.



Easy to do using antiX , using rox desktop.

[je55eah]

My dream is that someday I will have a desktop that is a fully functional file manager with a scrollable list view. It should be locked to the desktop folder and used like the article in the OPs post suggests. Folders on the desktop would open in a file manager window. Basically I wish it worked like windows but with a list view that displays the full title of the files. Tiled icons are ugly and they make it difficult to find things due to the truncated labels and the need to visually parse a matrix rather than a list.

[CharlesV]

My dream is that someday I will have a desktop that is a fully functional file manager with a scrollable list view. It should be locked to the desktop folder and used like the article in the OPs post suggests. Folders on the desktop would open in a file manager window. Basically I wish it worked like windows but with a list view that displays the full title of the files. Tiled icons are ugly and they make it difficult to find things due to the truncated labels and the need to visually parse a matrix rather than a list.

This is VERY doable. I setup a computer for someone where we opened thunar full screen open to their Desktop. The left side pane had their other folders, but all he did was to create his own folders, on his desktop and use those. Every click opened either a file or new folder. He wanted icons, but you could just use List or compact view.

And if you hid your main mx panel on the side, I think this would be just about what you described ?

[je55eah]

It would be close. I did something similar on windows many years ago because I found a way to load a program into the lower desktop layer.

The improvement would be to make a custom file manager or a desktop mode for the file manager. The special mode would eliminate the side bar and the menus, and it would prevent the file manager from navigating away from the desktop directory. Notmally I wouldn't want every directory to open in a new window, but for this purpose it would be preferred.

How did you set thunar as the desktop?

[CharlesV]

We used a script to launch thunar automatically upon login, And then had a shortcut to the script on the real desktop to start thunar that same way.

The script set thunar to full screen and then launched it. As I recall the main piece of the script was:

Code: Select all

xfconf-query -c thunar -p /last-window-maximized -s true

Screens of this mocked up . The first two are icon driven and the last list based. These have Cairo dock on the bottom and then the xfce panel is hidden off to the left. (Intelligent hide, so if you needed it, its there).

These are not perfect, but they achieve what it sounds like your after. And you can either run 'on the account' , or clean on a desktop folder.

[je55eah]

cheers