KDE Plasma Remains Committed To Supporting Icons On The Desktop

[Sho_]

FYI, if you're like me and think desktop icons are completely useless, to remove desktop icons in Plasma I had to go into Configure Desktop -> Filter -> Set "Hide Files Matching" and "*".

I think the only reasons I'm not using Gnome are the OpenSUSE defaults for Plasma are nice enough and currently Plasma seems to handle dpi scaling with multiple different-sized displays better.

Much easier way: Configure Desktop -> Layout (first option) -> Desktop instead of Folder View. Done.

--Eike

[fuzz]

Much easier way: Configure Desktop -> Layout (first option) -> Desktop instead of Folder View. Done.

--Eike

Thanks, I saw that but I didn't use it because there is no explanation of what that is. If I could I'd like to disable Plasma from spending any processing power on thinking about the desktop at all, beyond a wallpaper. Desktop icons need to die.

[Sho_]

Thanks, I saw that but I didn't use it because there is no explanation of what that is. If I could I'd like to disable Plasma from spending any processing power on thinking about the desktop at all, beyond a wallpaper. Desktop icons need to die.

That's what you get out of the Layout option . If you set it to Desktop, the icons code won't be loaded at all. It's definitely a speed/processing advantage over the Filter approach (which lists the folder anyway).

[woprandi]

Removing desktop icons is such an insane idea. The code to support that cannot be that great and should not take much to maintain, so thats a pretty lousy excuse. Its a very useful feature that allows easy access to common applications documents and folders. Gnome UI is such a cluster of screwups anyway, its basically unuseable. The workflow is simply terrible. Seems to be influenced by mobile touch interfaces. People need to realize that the mobile and desktop formats require completely different UI paradigms. Really anyone who has ever worked on mobile programming should be barred from touching desktop UIs.

Desktop support represented 10k lines in Nautilus

[torturedutopian]

The desktop in KDE is super powerful if you need it (and uses little memory apparently, even though it's slower to start but will improve in 5.12).

You can watch several different folders from the desktop through the use of the Folder View widget. You can have distinct workflows / desktops by defining activities (and vaults for secure ones). If you want a traditional desktop, you switch the whole desktop to a single "folder view". If you want nothing at all, you set it in "desktop" mode with no widget and with a fixed or dynamic background.

Sure, I cannot deny it took quite some time to stabilize it and un-confuse it, but the current philosophy seems pretty sane. (LTS versions, modularization, no duplicate effort with Qt classes whenever possible, "simple by default", and the recent focus for 2018 on usability / security... Have a look at those nice fixes made in a week : https://pointieststick.wordpress.com...tivity-part-2/

Even though I'm one of those people who tried hard and for years to switch to Gnome 3, I never could. But to be absolutely fair, it took a few years before KDE 4 reached a usable state for me !

[LaeMing]

I use KDE, but eschew desktop icons, preferring to lock my regulars in the task manager where they won't get covered by windows. And I use the root of my home hierarchy to dump uncategorised working files. But that is just me. Having the option for those who prefer to use the desktop as their launcher is always good.

(Though, like a lot of things MacOS-UI-ish, the desktop-as-launcher concept made a lot more sense back in the pre-MultiFinder days of the mid-80's to mid-90's when the desktop was somewhere you always returned to between applications).

[aufkrawall]

The desktop in KDE is super powerful if you need it (and uses little memory apparently, even though it's slower to start but will improve in 5.12).

I've always found KDE's Startup Performance quite pleasing, at least since when I first tried it with 5.7 or so. 5.12 will surely get some optimizations, but I don't think it would be fitting to rate it as "slower" until then.
And unlike Windows, the system is fully ready to use directly after logging in.

[angrypie]

Gnome needs more users that use it the way it was intended instead of using 15 extensions to turn it into a another XFCE.

GNOME-as-it-is is a brick. I wish it was a solid, real-life brick, so I could hit a few heads in the GNOME dev team, but I can't even do that. It's completely useless.

Although it is highly likely that the whole team got a few hits in their head already. There's just too much hubris behind a niche DE running on a niche OS.

[ssokolow]

I'm that weird guy who understands and likes Gnome's workflow. To me they are making all the right moves. Gnome needs more users that use it the way it was intended instead of using 15 extensions to turn it into a another XFCE. In a sense it's a good thing that people who don't like Gnome use another DEs - that's why they exist in the first place!

I'd be more sympathetic to your viewpoint if GNOME weren't making such a mess of desktops other than KDE by foisting more and more of their HIG decisions onto any user of GTK+.

There's a reason why I'll be upgrading from LXDE to either LXQt or KDE when I move off Lubuntu 14.04 LTS and I'm planning to run all GTK+ applications in Flatpak, even if only in unconstrained mode. (So the QT/GTK+-level portal patches can supply Qt-based file-chooser dialogs such as the KDE ones when applications ask for GTK+ ones.)

[brrrrttttt]

GNOME-as-it-is is a brick. I wish it was a solid, real-life brick, so I could hit a few heads in the GNOME dev team, but I can't even do that. It's completely useless.

Although it is highly likely that the whole team got a few hits in their head already. There's just too much hubris behind a niche DE running on a niche OS.

I've been using it on my primary machine for months with no extensions and zero issues. It's actually quite pleasant having something nice and simple with no rubbish I don't want (e.g. desktop icons).