Re: SV: [Nautilus-list] Desktop folder

[David Moles <david moles vykor com>]

On Wed, 2002-03-20 at 12:30, Joe Shaw wrote:
> 
> I don't think it's a good idea for $HOME to be the default desktop,
> although I definitely think it should be configurable, here's why:
> 
> My personal feeling is that my desktop is for launchers, links, etc.,
> and my home directory is my "dumping ground" for a bunch of stuff.  I
> recently cleaned up my home directory and it's still 110 entries, and
> 40+ of them are directories.  I would argue that many users are like me
> and dump their junk in $HOME.  And I don't want a bunch of .desktop
> files cluttering up my $HOME.

Of course, if you'd been using Nautilus from Day One, and Nautilus
made $HOME the desktop, you'd be dumping all that stuff in some place
like $HOME/tmp instead. :)

Do you even use the desktop, as it stands now, for anything other than
Home, Trash, and removable media? I think if I wasn't using $HOME, I
probably wouldn't put anything there... or else I'd end up putting
symlinks to everything there.

I used to be sysadmin at an all-Macintosh biotech company, and the
fact that the desktop was the desktop didn't stop people from dumping
110 files and 40 directories on it. In fact they seemed to prefer it
that way. It drove me up the wall, but I think it's a natural response
once you have more than a certain number of files and certain number
of directory levels (which numbers probably vary from person to person).
I know I have no idea where my alleged home directory is on my Windows
box, and wouldn't be able to find my Documents directory on my MacOS X
box if I didn't have a bookmark to it on the toolbar.

(Funny that we call this Nautilus... it strikes me that the *real*
way I "organize" my files is a sequence of: Fill up home directory
with an unmanageable directory structure; Move to new machine and
stuff old home directory in some place like $HOME/backups and never
look at it again; Repeat. Just like a mollusk with a chambered 
shell, when I think about it.)