The message 4385D728.9070203@stealthnet.net from James Taylor james.taylor@stealthnet.net contains these words:
In a historical sense yes - Windows XP generally has the folder 'Documents and settings' and inside that users, and inside that 'Desktop' which acts as the folder in which your desktop settings are installed. Because they expect their users to store other data in their user folder (application settings etc) they meerly move the actuall desktop directory to being the 'username/Desktop' directory. I believe this is customizable AND overridable in the registry. I also believe this is controllable in Gnome / KDE ? You can specify what directory you want to be your 'desktop'
Apologies if this has been mentioned, but you can of course tell Firefox where you want it to download to. I save files to one directory and saved pages to another. Works automagically.