Isn’t the desktop just a place for displaying a picture? People have icons there?
Story time.
I was helping someone at work the other day…
As part of my usual process, I minimized most of what the person was using, because I dgaf what users are actually doing on their computers. I’m only interested in getting the “problem” that they’re complaining about, solved, so I can go home.
When I finished minimizing everything, I shit you not, this person had two full screens of icons on their desktop. I couldn’t help but blurt out “that’s a lot of icons” they went on to describe how they use their desktop as a dumping ground and they clear the whole thing every few months.
Since I couldn’t give a single shit about what they do with their computer, I said something to the effect of “alright”, fixed the unrelated “problem” they had and moved on.
I do this. It’s the “heap system”. After a couple of months it gets full and I create a folder called “crap” and move everything inside it. After this, the process repeats itself and often leads to folder trees like C:\Users\dh\Desktop\crap\crap2\more crap\crap\important crap\crap.
This usually continues for the life of my computer and then, one day, it just gets wiped because buggered if I know what’s in the crap folder…
Idgaf as long as it isn’t onedrive.
OneDrive can be configured to automatically back up your desktop. So the desktop might be OneDrive
People who use desktop as your unsorted downloads folder, who hurt you?
I use the desktop as a very temporary folder. Because I’ll be annoyed by having stuff on there and will delete them as soon as I don’t need them any more.
My downloads folder has random installers from 2021.
Save to documents surely? It’s a document
I didn’t think that any Windows related software was actually aware that the ‘Documents’ folder is supposed to be for documents. Because my ‘Documents’ folder gets used as a dumping ground for any old program to drop their shit in. Even though there’s literally dedicated folders for app data and saved games.
Personally I make my own ‘Home’ folder with my own pictures, movies, documents etc. folders because whether it’s Windows, Linux or Android, the concept of having your own user folder for your own things is a joke because developers don’t respect that and just dump their files anywhere.
I don’t use the Documents folder because of that reason, but it’s still weird to me that that doesn’t happen on Linux, so my Documents folder is mostly empty there
Yeah, documents itself isn’t bad but you still end up with a bunch of stuff just being chucked into the root of your user folder, despite the fact that folders like ‘.config’ exist. Personally, I like my ‘home’ space to be just my files, things that I’ve put there myself, without random programs making new folders and leaving dotfiles lying around. I’m a bit of a neat freak on my pc, way more than in real life. Personally, /home is just another /etc for me. My shit goes elsewhere.
I actually really like this and when I reconfigure my laptop I might implement the same thing
I used the desktop all the time when I was on Windows. When I moved to Linux fulltime, KDE wouldn’t let you save to desktop. Eventually I figured out how to fix that, but by that time I had the habit broken. Thankfully i never reverted and my shit is generally organized because of it.
Me: “I’ve got an elaborate folder structure for all my documents.”
Windows: “You want to put this in the root directory of OneDrive.”
Me: "No, I want to put it in \SpecialFiles\ProjectName\IterationNo\DetailedSchematic"
Windows: “Root directory of OneDrive it is.”
That’s why I debloat windows anytime I do a new install. Drop that box 🥊
Exactly.
Because My Documents is where Windows keeps all your save games from the last decade and beyond, because why would I use it to store MY DOCUMENTS?
I fucking hate onedrive sooo much for this, it kills me a little everytime and it happens all the time. Im just a husk at this point. God damn fick you onedrive.
🤮
Microsoft and application developers treat the Documents folder like a total dumping ground for whatever random nonsense they can dream up. No wonder people look elsewhere. Need to store user files? Documents. A database? Documents. Giant cache files? Documents. Config? Documents. Executables? Fuck it put those in Documents too.
Why would I ever store my real documents in a folder so littered with shit that I can never find anything? It’s not like the search actually works.
Also as a Linux user myself and to head off any smugness, developers do the same thing with the home directory so users end up inventing weird ways to stay organized.
I have my files meticulously organized in hierarchical folders that sync across all my devices through One Drive and to my NAS through One Drive.
I hate that Microsoft wants to dump everything in Documents.
Also, for SOME FUCKING REASON, my work system, wants to put everything into the root of One Drive. Like fuck please put it in Documents at least. I don’t want ANYTHING in the root folder if I can avoid it, aside from maybe the occasional super special thing.
Today I used Alt+Space to open krunner, typed the name of a C script I’m working on, and it pulled up search results for the file, as well as relevant websites I visited related to that title, and in that moment I realized how much I missed out growing up with Explorer.
I don’t ever search for files/folders in explorer’s browser anymore. I just use Everything and TreeSize at this point. Windows’ search function is pointless.
OneDrive documents --> PC documents --> desktop
why must I press so many buttons to get it where I want :/This one guy at work has 3 layers of desktop icons. LAYERS. I don’t know how he manages.
“Sir, please. I’m begging you. Use a folder. Just one single folder.”
“THOG NO LIKE COMPUTER! THOG SAVE TO DESKTOP!!!”
This is why you people aren’t allowed access to printers anymore.
It’s not because people kept printing their emails 40" wide on the plotter? TIL.
L- layers??
icons on icons on icons as there is no blank space left.
On Windows? AFAIK Windows eventually just gives you a “no space on desktop” popup… Never seen any layering.
All IT support immediately revoked.
I’d be happy if those apps were asking to save to Documents like in the screenshot. But alas, reality is much more cruel. They always want to save to some vague OneDrive location, and won’t even show you the local file browser without extra steps.
F12
Documents, Desktop and Picture folders are just moved from the user folder into the user folder\OneDrive folder.
Other than that it work exactly the same.
OneDrive also always has a local folder. Usually in your user folder.
You can blame a lot on OneDrive, but this isn’t one of them.
You see, I have OneDrive disabled and set to not sync.
It still wants me to save to a OneDrive directory, simply because I’m signed into my Microsoft account.
I don’t want any of my files uploaded to OneDrive; therefore I don’t want to save them in the OneDrive folder. I have other folders where I’d like to save my files instead.
So the behaviour I described is a persistent annoyance for me; despite you telling me it isn’t a problem.
I don’t mind OneDrive sync, I like it honestly.
What I absolutely do not want, is my Desktop on One Drive. For starters, its often a scratch place. I don’t want it instantly pushing 6GB of photos I just pulled off my camera’s memory card to the cloud before I can sorr them.
If yOU dOn’T uSe oNEdrIvE iT is IMpOssiBle to AuTO sAve! The technology just doesn’t exist to save on a timer without involving the cloud!
This is a word document. Where should you save a word document?
In the documents folder. The documents folder.
That’s right! You save it to the desktop!
no… No please…
What about this picture file? Where would you save a picture file?
In the pictures folder. Cmon…
That’s right! You save it to the desktop!
oh god why…
I just downloaded this file… Where should I save it?
The… The downloads folder?
That’s right! You save it to the desktop!
: '-(
For those that don’t know… This is a reference to this video. https://youtu.be/cUbIkNUFs-4
I use downloads instead, it mainly functions as a temporary folder where anything unimportant can live and once it gets a scroll bar it all gets deleted. For the very rare things that are important I could then move them after.
How do you move a file after deletion? I need to know this black magic.
Well first off, through
GodLinux, all things are possible. You can have multiple hard links to a file, where a given hard link is deleted, but you can still manipulate the file through any other other links. Alternately, you can open a file, and while you have a valid open file descriptor, delete the file. The file descriptor is still valid until you close the file though, so you can still save (thus move) it to a new location.Windows locks files when you open them, preventing these kinds of shenanigans.
