Re: Should Desktop = Home?

[Daniel Borgmann <spark-mailinglists web de>]

On Sun, 2004-10-03 at 11:34 +0200, gabor wrote:
> anyway, to have $HOME or $HOME/Desktop is not really the big issue here.
> the big issue is that the user has 2 (two) directories where he should
> look for files. and that's a bad thing.
> so, if we promote $HOME/Desktop as the document store, why do we
> provide an icon on the desktop that takes them back th $HOME?
> 
> maybe because many-apps-still-save-files-into-$HOME-and-so-on?
> 
> to reformulate:
> should the users simply forget about $HOME?
> if that's the case, we should remove that icon from the desktop.

Yes, I think that would be the right thing to do. However, there has to
be a way to access the home folder. I really like the solution of
Ubuntu, they don't have any desktop icons by default actually, but the
common places appear at the panel menu under a "Computer" item. Maybe
the menu shouldn't be called "Computer" exactly, but I like the idea to
put those places into the menu. This would also allow users to delete
icons on their desktop without losing them completely, so it shouldn't
be necessary to "freeze" them anymore. Of course it should be possible
to drag those items to the desktop to create shortcuts. Another
advantage of something like a "Places" menu on the panel would be, that
you wouldn't be forced to open a Nautilus window, just to access this
menu. That's crack. :P

I also like the thought to change the working directory to ~/Desktop if
that doesn't cause any other problems.

No need to burn down our $HOMEs...

-- 
Daniel Borgmann <spark mayl de>