On Thu, 2005-11-24 at 15:07 +0000, James Taylor wrote:
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.
When you say desktop settings it seems like you are referring to desktop configuration (wallpaper and theme etc)
No desktop settings are held in Documents and settings\username\desktop.
It is simply a folder that holds shortcuts (or if someone annoying has been using the machine...loads of files) that were placed on the desktop as that user.
Personally I see nothing wrong with this behaviour or the problem in having a desktop folder (on either Windows or Linux)
Things get a little more obscured with Nautilus (well at least I think it is Nautilus that does this and not Gnome itself) because you can place objects in the desktop folder that will then appear on the desktop, but magic puts other things on there as well (like mounted volumes that appear in /media)
Jan, are you saying that it shouldn't be possible to put anything on the desktop and it should *only* be a workspace, or are you suggesting that only quick launch icons etc should be placed on the desktop and not files (in which case I suppose a xml file or something could be used to hold the contents of the desktop)
On windows things can get a bit screwy if (for example) you put large files on the desktop and then use roaming profiles...but that's more of a problem with roaming profiles than the desktop folder.