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How clean is your desktop?
| 18% | 43 votes |
| 5% | 12 votes |
| 3% | 9 votes |
| 4% | 11 votes |
| 19% | 47 votes |
| 42% | 100 votes |
| 6% | 16 votes |
[ Voting Booth | Other Polls | Back Home ]
- Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
- Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
- This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
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(1)
Kettering's Observation:
Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by janrinok on Saturday July 20, @11:25AM
I have icons for those programs that I use all of the time (10-12 apps) which live on the top icon bar (MATE desktop). Other than that I like my screen to be clear.
My actual desk though is usually a clutter of paperwork, thumbdrives, memory cards etc.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by turgid on Saturday July 20, @05:15PM
I use Window Maker, which I started using over 20 years ago when Afterstep went crazy. There are two icons on the screen unless I have any minimissed windows. There's not start bar or task bar. I do almost everything from xterm and I right-click on the desktop to bring up the menu on rare occasions. Why fix what ain't broken.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by srobert on Saturday July 20, @05:55PM
My work PC runs Windows. I've always used icons, folders and links on the desktop in that environment. On my personal Linux laptops, it's just a black background, except during the holidays when it gets gussied up with festive wallpaper.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Saturday July 20, @08:40PM
On my main crusty Thinkpad T410, 41 icons. Assorted text file notes, old ELF executables, source tarballs, old music purchase zips, and a couple ISO files I was running in QEMU/KVM for shiggles.
My work machine which also runs Fedora, much worse.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 20, @11:22PM (4 children)
Linux has a couple icons. Windows has a couple thousand. Alright, maybe I exaggerate a little . . . On Linux, installing a program, if I want an icon, I have to click a box telling it that I want an icon installed. Windows? It just installs icons every time anything is installed. It installs random icons along with the program icon, just for the fun of it. It's so cluttered, I couldn't find an icon if I wanted to click on an icon. I find the programs I want the same way I do on Linux desktop. Click the menu, or start, button, and start typing the name of the program.
Not that I see the desktop very often. I first have to minimize however many windows are open, to get a glimpse of the desktop. Who even looks at a bare desktop?
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday July 23, @06:01AM (2 children)
The thing that drives me the most up the wall is when a program installer will automatically put an icon on your desktop without even asking. And do the same thing again every time it gets updated.
And you need admin privileges to install it, so then you have to re-escalate every time to delete the fucking thing after.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 23, @06:29AM (1 child)
If it bothers enough, you can just have a program watch for file system events and delete them. MacOS (fsevents), Linux (inotify and fanotify), and Windows (FileSystemWatcher and ChangeNotification) all have ways to do that. Start it as a service on boot, have it use proper wait calls instead of spinning, filter events by proper file type, and you are all set with minimum overhead or zero performance impact.
(Score: 4, Touché) by tangomargarine on Wednesday July 24, @05:58AM
Or these jerk developers could just add a checkbox to the installer so I don't have to install and configure some other software just to keep them from fucking around with my system without asking...
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday August 02, @10:43AM
Something I noticed back in the last century when I was first learning Linux: If you want a utility that does X, Linux will give you a nice command-line utility that does X and a half-dozen more things related to X and nothing else from their repo easy-peasy, while Windows will make you go through a graphical installer that creates a C:\Program Files\FlyByNight Inc\SimpleUtility\ path, asks you to register online so they can sell your data to marketing companies, demands you click through a complex EULA that might give them control of your first-born child, and every time you use it also pops up a window suggesting that you go to various websites telling the world how wonderful their software is.
And it's only gotten worse, since now they also like to show in-app ads in the Windows app.
And the really crazy thing is how many Windows people get confused at how friggin' easy the Linux world can be, to the point where distros have made App Store-like applications and fancy graphical installers to give them what they're used to.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21, @11:24PM (6 children)
No icons really. My laptop runs Gnome from Debian stable and there just aren't desktop icons. It's very minimalist and efficient, designed for trackpad use and fullscreen apps. The wallpaper is a gradient from green to blue, vertically, but I rarely see it.
On my desktop it's fvwm on OpenBSD. It only has icons if you iconify (minimize) something. It's a widescreen monitor so usually I don't have anything iconified. But no icons in the traditional sense of double-clicking to launch an app. The wallpaper is a gradient, orange in the top left to purple in the bottom right corner where the pager is.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday July 23, @05:58AM (5 children)
Is it an option you can turn on, and you just don't feel the need to, or another foolish decision that GNOME clearly knows better than us and forbids?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 23, @08:59PM (2 children)
> Is it an option you can turn on
Why? Judging by the comments, almost nobody uses them. I'll go one further and suggest every self-important dotfile in ~/ belongs under ~/.config/ or ~/.appdata/
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday July 24, @05:55AM (1 child)
Gee thanks, really helpful to moralize about how the feature doesn't matter rather than answer the question.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24, @08:13AM (1 child)
Different AC. It's an option you can turn off. Same as Windows 7 and later as well as OS X Sonoma and later.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday July 22, @01:40PM
The icons on my desktop are always covered with windows, so even though there are about 8 of them, I never see them. (I configure Mate with a command bar at the top and a window bar at the bottom. The command bar has 11 icons at the moment (I change it occasionally) and three menus (Applications, Places, Systems).
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday July 22, @03:14PM (2 children)
My physical desktop is a a physical embodiment of a multi-level cache. It looks irretrievably messy, but isn't. I generally know how many inches down in a pile of papers something is. I rarely (a couple of times a year) need to do an in-depth, comprehensive sequential search. The 'cache' extends to the bookshelves either side of the desk, file boxes on the floor, and further bookshelves in another room, and file boxes in storage.
The computer 'desktop' currently displays roughly 100 icons (pictures of something), which includes all the 'stuff' in the taskbar, the small graphics in each browser tab, the browser toolbar, the bookmarks bar, and the 'buttons' on the current web-page. The actual virtual 'desktop' is rarely visible as I run applications full-screen, unless I'm working on multiple terminal windows, or dragging and dropping stuff between windows representing different parts of the file system. I use two physical screens - one main one, and an adjunct for lower priority parallel/background/reference stuff.
I'm a packrat at all levels.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24, @12:44AM (1 child)
a.k.a. the archeological filing system.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24, @09:47AM
Based on the depth and age of the piles on my desk "paleontological filing system" is probably a more apt name.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Monday July 22, @03:19PM (1 child)
Like others, I hardly ever use the desktop these days and launch programs using the start menu search or the command line. Unless we're talking about my PinePhone, where I do run some scripts and things from desktop shortcuts.
Back when I used Windows though, my desktops ended up with enormous numbers of icons and that isn't even counting the "was on desktop" folder, "was on desktop 2" and so on, that I made periodically.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 03, @02:50AM
Well, then, define icons, right?
Are we talking actual desktop icons? Usually I have none, but at the moment I have four .iso files awaiting burning to physical media (first time I've done that in over a decade...)
Then there's the taskbar quick-launch "pinned to taskbar" icons. When I was running GNOME I had about 6 of those, but I've switched to XFCE... there's a taskbar at the bottom but it's set to auto-hide, at the moment it has the six default icons in it but I rarely use more than the Chrome launcher from there, occasionally Thunar file manager, and nearly as often I'll launch them from the (also auto-hidden) top bar applications (like Start) menu. Under there Xubuntu's XFCE has a god-awful bi-level menu of what looks to be about 60 launchers, many which seem to appear in multiple locations. I don't feel the need to customize it for my daily driver, the things I need are sprinkled in and easy enough to get to, I suppose. I do run Conky on my daily driver, mostly for the big clock and calendar, but it's also nice to be reminded of things like CPU and memory consumption, top processes, disk space etc. at a glance.
The "development" desktop I have created for our product development also runs XFCE (thus, me eating the dogfood for my daily driver). It explicitly never runs the "desktop" component which sets the wallpaper, displays desktop icons (including wastebasket, etc.), shows the right-click menu, etc. We set a wallpaper with feh, and that's all we get from "desktop" - the developers do get the "Panel" which includes the basic clock (no conky, at least not yet), taskbar, applications menu, and some system specific quicklaunch icons in a bottom panel, but when the system goes into "customer facing" kiosk mode that panel isn't launched at all - nice that XFCE allows that, GNOME was a pain to de-feature that way. Icons in the product? Only to identify saved configuration files and similar stuff. No "user configurable" workflows for us, it's hard enough to train and support 5000 customer sites with a rigidly defined workflow - menu structure.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday July 22, @06:59PM
About 10 programs and such icons on the desktop, then another 0-50 temporary once depending on projects or ideas i'm currently working on.
Also I cheated as the launch-bar has about 15 more programs, but are those really icons on the desktop or not?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday July 22, @09:05PM
In my little world if it's not on my dock/taskbar it doesn't exist. Honestly I think this is because I learned a harsh lesson years ago about desktop files causing my login on a new machine to take longer. I don't know if that's actually TRUE, but someone told me that Winders will grab all those files and bring them to the new machine so I just keep that blank as possible.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by ese002 on Tuesday July 23, @03:57AM
I never use icons. If they exist, I don't see them because the screen is covered in windows.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 23, @05:54AM (5 children)
invalid namespace
normally it makes sense to have one joke answer, but it's "A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind" instead of "A clean desktop is the sign of a sick mind" so like half of the options go each way
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Wednesday July 24, @11:52AM (2 children)
I was taught "A clean desk is a sign of a dirty mind", but the details only matter if you are autistic.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2, Funny) by anubi on Thursday July 25, @01:20AM
A clean desk is like a clean garage.
Nobody's fixing any cars.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday July 23, @02:33PM (4 children)
As a classic Mac user back in the day, the design of the Mac didn't tend to "guide" or "force" you into creating desktop icons. Especially as shortcuts to installed applications. So classic Mac users never formed this habit. This habit would be firmly ingrained before Windows 95 was available -- the first version of Windows to finally strongly resemble the classic Mac UI and the forerunner to modern Windows desktop.
Years ago, in the twenty teens, an old friend from the classic Mac days asked me: "how many icons do you have on your Windows desktop?" And we both instantly laughed recognizing that Mac users had this habit of keeping NO ICONS on the desktop.
I have for years on Windows kept exactly ONE icon on the desktop, which is a shortcut to a folder with things I might want to access quite easily Including some shortcuts to other folders. Sometimes when "Save As" dialogs pop up it is convenient to click Desktop, and then see that one lone shortcut which leads to direct USEFUL shortcuts and folders.
I use taskbar shortcuts for the moist comma applications I use.
One thing British schools lack that American schools have is active shooter drills so we are prepared.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday July 24, @10:49AM (3 children)
I never understood why people let their Windows desktop get cluttered up with icons. I've always created folders with descriptive names and put the icons in there. I've seen desktops almost entirely covered in icons.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday July 24, @02:51PM (1 child)
I have heard of worse stories.
I've heard of hundreds and hundreds of icons just piled on the desktop with not attempt at organization of positioning.
One of the major reasons to not have icons on the desktop is that you should not need to actually need to access the desktop, which means having to arrange windows in such a way that parts of the desktop are exposed.
Tip: create a shortcut to the desktop and put that into your taskbar so you can right-click and open it. But it should not even be necessary for this to be some sort of tip or "insight".
I heard of one senior who wants to have a backup and so they select all icons and then copy / paste them to have double the icons. Of course the icons are themselves usually shortcuts. BUt they insist that they need to do this. This story is told to me by a friend who helps seniors with computers.
One thing British schools lack that American schools have is active shooter drills so we are prepared.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25, @09:19AM
And don't you dare delete the file "Copy of Copy of Copy of Copy of Untitled.doc (3)" because that is critically important to the operation of your business.
And don't empty the Recycle Bin either, some people store files in there like any old folder instead of just the ones they probably don't need.
I could go on, but I'm glad I moved on from the first level help desk before so many helpless people had to use computers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27, @10:05PM
Me neither. Best to not let your Windows do that. Let us go to seed. Micro$erf is best left on the back end, ruining servers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday July 24, @12:56PM
I wonder how modern post turn of the century changes in computer use affect legacy stuff like backgrounds and background icons.
In the old days when everything was run locally, it was important. Now a days the OS is just a boot loader for the web browser, and very nearly everything is viewed in the browser.
I think the modern equivalent of an "icon on the background" would be the web browser "bookmarks" bar. I have 9 categorized folders in my bookmarks bar right now and 4 site links for a total of 13 on my bookmarks bar.
On my only Windows 10 desktop I have one icon the trash can. On my Chromebook I don't even know whats behind the browser, I guess I could boot and find out, but if a tree falls in a forest and nobody sees it...
(Score: 2) by liar on Thursday July 25, @01:34AM
Icons in the task bar, which is set to autohide. Desktop is clean except for background/artwork. My wifes machine gives me a headache when I need to work on it, because there are so many icons...
Noli nothis permittere te terere.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25, @01:53AM
I don't even have a desktop. DE's are for people who don't know about tiling WMs.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25, @03:26AM
The cleaning lady came through last night, took all the candy bar wrappers and empty cheese puff bags, wiped away the Mountain Dew stains, and vacuumed under and around the desk. Hey, man, I didn't even realize there was a keyboard on the desk!
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Thursday July 25, @05:52AM
I have a bunch of icons for the things I use most or think I might need. Definitely not zero or one, and definitely not over one hundred.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday July 25, @09:22PM
In the event that they didn't want me to put things on the desktop, they would do things differently.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by EJ on Friday July 26, @04:19AM (3 children)
is doing it wrong.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 05, @07:02PM (17 children)
Why us a known racist pretending like the Biden administration is so much worse than the dumpster fire of 2016-2020. Or better yet, why does this community allow such blatant racists to hang around? Free speech one may say, yet speech much less troubling than the Fascist Agenda receives censorship. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday August 05, @07:32PM (16 children)
Which site rules have khallow, VLM or Runaway1956 broken? Tell me which US law has been contravened. Show me how many American Representatives have been taken to court for expressing exactly the same views. I don't like them. I don't agree with them. But I will defend anyone's right, from anywhere in the political spectrum, to express themselves if they follow the rules of this site. If you don't like that concept then get the rules changed.
Americans have the right to free speech. I have not deleted your comment. The thing that you do not like is that it is a right that everyone enjoys, not just those whom you like or whose opinion you agree with. It is not for you to decide who can use this site and who cannot.
As a web site we can choose who we give a platform to. Only one person has ever been banned. But not for his political views. They are still available and can be read in his journals and earlier comments. He took his personal attacks too far. Be careful that you do not allow your hatred to cause you to fall into the same trap.
You on the other hand promised to spam those people with right-wing views whom you do not agree with. By your own admission it is spam. I have therefore marked it accordingly.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 05, @11:45PM
You keep lying about others with such a care free attitude it can be nothing but intentional. I gave you the benefit of a doubt that it was the spammers making your life difficult, but since then you have repeatedly censored content and used your own personal attacks to justofy the censorship.
You whine about personal attacks, but again you only punish certain people you do not like then turn around and defend rightwing extremism with a metric ton of personal attacks as free speech.
You are broken. You are a liar. You are a propagandist pretending to be objective, just like the ilk you spend so much time defending. You platform literal Nazis that spam lies, hatred, and your dreaded personal attacks, yet still you defend them.
As they say, your actions show us your true feelings. Performative lies about spamming to cover your abuse is the real clincher. Never transparency, never apologies, just more false accusations to try and justify your abuse.
At this point I do not believe this site is being run by anyone with honesty or integrity, and as another user asked how do we know there is not skimming going on with subscription payments? For years it was claimed the site needed over 5k per year, and it still fell down!
With all your other issues it seems likely you are a malevolent manipulative bastard pushing psyop nonsense while pretending the site is a libertarian free speech utopia. Very Musky of you, mod down some more, maybe fewer users will see this analysis and question your motives.
So please, explain why some rules are applied to only some users while you get to post offtopic accusations then spam mod replies. The facts are readily available to anyone that bothers to pay attention and test out your responses. Keeping posting your bullshit, helps everyone see what a petty liar you are.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 05, @11:59PM (11 children)
I should add, it is not hatred, it is shining a light on dark places. All you have said is that you happily break bread with racists and fascists while persecuting anyone that calls out their racism and fascism.
The comments about why is VLM still allowed to post are simply an indictment of your choices. You reverse spam mods of racism, you allow personal attacks from rightwing users, and your running theme is somehow defending "free speech" while hypocritically applying the rules only as you see fit.
Highlighting VLM's racism is my free speech, yet you say I cannot because "personal attacks." Then you ignore the personal attacks of others or use the appropriate downmods instead of spam modding. You janrinok are a real piece of lying work.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday August 06, @02:55AM (6 children)
You are free to argue against what Runaway, VLM, khallow or any other community member says. You do not have the right to attack them as individuals - that rule has existed on the site since 2014. Ad hominem attacks are specifically mentioned in the rules and the graduated response to them is currently being followed by me. You do not have the right to accuse them of being Russians, or of being part of some organisation trying to undermine the USA unless you can back up your ridiculous allegations with evidence. Which you apparently cannot.
Aristarchus claimed all the same things that you are now claiming. That he was being persecuted - he was not. That his right to freedom of speech was being removed simply because we would not post his repetitive abuse on the front pages. Then he claimed he was being censored - just as you keep doing now. He was moderated. There was evidence of several years of doxxing once it had been brought to our attention. For that he was banned. His posts are deleted. If you make a response to one of his comments then they too will disappear. They have not been deleted but as a comment only exists as a child of the deleted post it can no longer be found when pages are constructed. It remains in the database.
Your are welcome here to join in the discussions. That does not give you the right to post anything you want wherever you want - no matter how you try to justify it. Moderation is not censorship. Your posts remain and they can be seen and read by anyone who wants to do so.
However, I have told you repeatedly how to make a formal complaint. You refuse to do so. That is, in effect, no complaint whatsoever. You could fight to get the rules changed. I have told you how to go about that too. No, you will not do that because it requires some effort and commitment on your part. You have brought this on yourself by your previous posts. Forgive me if I do not feel sympathetic to your personal demands. You have the opportunity of creating an account thus having a say anywhere on the site and a vote on how the site is run. You will not do so - perhaps because you fear that your anonymity might be compromised and someone might hold you responsible for what you say. If you live in such a world then perhaps you should be changing that rather than whinging on a website.
It is this sort of off-topic sniping at any comment or person that you disagree with that resulted in a significant loss of membership. This occurred long before I became an administrator. The outcome was that ACs were removed from the main stories. The membership is slowly growing again and others who have not posted in several years are returning and joining in the discussions. What you now seem intent on doing is making the journals and the Poll unusable too. Your comment has been made in a Poll - it is off-topic, repetitive and adds nothing of value to the discussion. It is Spam.
Finally, you could just leave and go elsewhere. I would rather that you stay and participate fully in the discussion but the choice to do either of these things remains yours. This is not a free platform for you to raise any issue that you wish. If you want to do that, get an account and use your journals.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06, @09:13AM (2 children)
No one is attacking them as individuals, they are being attacked for being fascists, racists, and otherwise criminals. We have a duty to do this, as members of the Upstanding Citizens Brigade. Why don't you join us, janrinok?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday August 06, @09:39AM (1 child)
Posted numerous times.
Posted numerous times.
A plea to have Runaway1956 banned for nothing more that you dislike him.
None of those are arguing against what has been said, but are direct ad hominem attacks. You can lie all you like. You are hoist by your won petard. Please stop acting like a little child. You were once someone with something intelligent to say but now you are simply pathetic.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06, @12:42PM
No, that is the resilt of your abuse and blatant protection of bad abusive rightwing users. As always, who and what you defend as having free speech rights displays your paradoxical choice. Abuse, lies, and personal attacks are fine coming from you and rightwing fascists, but calling them out for their bad behavior is suddenly a bannable personal attack.
You are a hypocrite trying to project your own faults on others as you play arbiter of valid opinions. Your free speech concept is beyond broken and twisted by you to allow rightwing abuse. Anyway, as I've said your actions and in-actions display every flaw one needs to know, if people bother to pay attention.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday August 06, @03:22AM (3 children)
Example?
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.