KDE Plasma Remains Committed To Supporting Icons On The Desktop

[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 !

[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

[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).

[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_]

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]

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.

EDIT: If there are better ways to remove desktop icons in Plasma I'd love to know, it's so difficult to find the right configuration settings sometimes.

[cl333r]

To me Linux has always sucked at desktop icon support compared to windows.
Mostly because it's an OS for devs and fringe users, and you hear all the time moronic stuff like "I never reboot my OS, I don't need defragmentation, etc".
When I moved to Linux I was greatly surprised I needed to know what compile is and why I'm supposed to compile, link, grep, edit, patch, whatever my apps. Which quickly explained why Linux never made it on the desktop, windows required you to install an antivirus, Linux to become a dev and assemble your software while jacking off to the GPL, hence almost everybody stayed with windows.

[GreenByte]

Blodoffer you will get tired soon. I will be waiting for you in the KDE camp.

And I'm waiting for both of you in the i3 camp.

[deant]

well i made a happy transition to Cinnamon desktop. I do not care how old the mentioned code is and i still use icons, as all of my collegues which are on linux desktops. It is important to me because i have only 2 pcs with Windows in my company, everything else is on Debian.

[KRiloshart]

Blodoffer you will get tired soon. I will be waiting for you in the KDE camp.