Re: User/administrative testing: $DESKTOP

[Tuomas Kuosmanen <tigert ximian com>]

On Fri, 2002-06-07 at 18:46, Jeff Waugh wrote:
    <quote who="Havoc Pennington">
    
    > I'd rather we try a .gnome-desktop -> Desktop symlink and deprecate
    > .gnome-desktop. I'm trying to get that working for the next Red Hat
    > release, among other reasons so we have the same Desktop in gnome/kde.
    
    That would be far preferable, yes. Hopefully my experience will encourage
    it.

Yeah, the .gnome-desktop is worst of all options since it is invisible
on the file selector dialogs by default.

Being myself very much loving the $HOME == desktop (which you all know
already) and pondering whether it might be cool for everyone,  I have
noticed myself thinking quite a lot like Jeff had experienced. It is a
very nice setup, but way too much crap will show there. Stuff that you
really should not see or touch. I myself toss them under my panel, so it
is not a problem for me, but we cannot do that for all users, and it is
simply an ugly way to "solve" the problem :-) 

Plus there are other users who simply dont want to manipulate files on
the desktop, but rather want just a very clean wallpaper and have their
files in the homedir. Forcing the desktop == $HOME would not be very fun
for them.

I think the ~/Desktop might be the way to go by default. It is pretty
visible on the file selectors and terminal too. While it is less cool
for people like me, it sounds like a reasonable compromise that seems
more or less logical and easy to find. If I remember correctly, MacOSX
also uses ~/Desktop/.

Btw, symlinking is indeed a good way to dogfood this. If you remember 2
years ago (the first huge flameware about $HOME == desktop :) I played
with the symlinks to see if it would work. I think I'll give ~/Desktop/ 
a go after I return from vacation to see how I like it. The $HOME on my
desktop has definitely been a pleasant 2 years for sure.

Tuomas

-- 
:: :: Tuomas Kuosmanen  :: Art Director, Ximian :: ::
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