Icons on the desktop

[Kevin Birch <kbirch pobox com>]

I was playing with my copy of Gnome that I installed for the first time 
tonight, and got to thinking about desktop icons.  You'll have to forgive 
me if I cover ground that has already been discussed, but I haven't seen 
any info about this online.

It seems currently that the only time a user has "icons on the desktop" 
is when gmc is running.  When it is first started, you get at least a 
home directory icon, which seems to be some kind of minimized x-window in 
disguise.  This seems contrary to how a desktop should operate.  That is, 
you should always have icons, and only when they are opened, do you have 
some way to browse the contents of the item they represent.  So that in a 
perfect world, when a user first logs in, they are presented with common 
icons, without having to launch a specific app to enable this feature.

Is this kind of behavior to be implemented at some future time, or was 
this a design decision?

Cheers,
Kevin

--
Kevin Birch
kbirch@pobox.com