On Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 10:27:35AM +0000, Adam Bower wrote:
On Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 08:43:15AM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
On Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 01:04:21AM +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Personally I see nothing wrong with this behaviour or the problem in having a desktop folder (on either Windows or Linux)
I think that the whole concept of pretending that a computer's file system maps sensibly onto a 'desktop' and 'folders' is pretty silly. It hides too much of the power of a good computer file system. Why can't we call files 'files' and directories 'directories'?
I also don't see the problem of having a folder called 'Desktop' in your home directory that holds the contents of the desktop. What else would you do?
... but my computer isn't a desktop, nor is it a place to put one, it's *on* my desktop. I just want ways available to make it easy to use. What I have in practice on my screen when I start my machine at work or my home machine is a set of terminal windows which automatically connect to various places (e.g. my mail system, usenet news, my coding development areas, etc.), plus maybe a few other icons/buttons which do useful things.
These appear on a set of separate virtual screens, so I have one screen for development work (well two actually), one for news and mail, one for web browsing, etc. This really doesn't relate to a 'DeskTop' paradigm at all.
One thing that surprises me is how few Windows users use the multiple virtual 'desktops' that are freely available for windows as they are for Unix/Linux systems. I suspect it's the 'desktop' paradigm that makes this happen, having as many 'desktops' as you want and being able to go from one to another instantly just seems wrong if you're stuck in the rut of an office desktop.
Not have a folder and not allow people to put icons/files/etc. on the desktop? (I keep a few files on my desktop, due to the goodness of Gnome doing icon preview of photos this is quite handy, and it reminds me to put downloaded files in the right place later on) or have some other method which allows people to put icons/files/etc. on the desktop but give the folder a different name? or hide the folder somewhere obscure so they (especially newbies) can't find it?
You find it by using the facilities that a computer has that a real desktop hasn't:-
You use the file system hierarchy to have easy and quick and easily found places to keep all your data. It amazes me how many people don't use a tree structured approach to keeping stuff, so many people have the whole screen covered with 'top level' icons.
If you do lose something you use the computer's ability to search huge data stores very quickly to find it.
Another thing you can do with Gnome is you can create "locations" which can point at an SSH connection/filesystem (SFTP I guess, I've never used this) and FTP server, a Windows Share, or a WebDAV folder. You can then make these locations appear in the file dialogues as an easy way to get places with a single click.
Which goes to prove what I said to some extent, this is something unique to the computer environment and constraining it to a 'desktop' just makes it more difficult to use and understand.