a suggestion for the mint desktop/ files app

[after_ait]

Girls and boys thank you for providing such a useful distro, I've been using Mint for about 9 years now. I'm currently using 20.1 Cinammon, downloaded the Beta and haven't seen any option yet to upgrade to the LTS release (unless it just happened)

I have a suggestion for Cinammon, searched online and got pointed to the Linux Mint team. Obviously it could be done in other environments too.

Me, I grew up with Bell Labs Unix on a PDP-11, and have always been cool with directories and a command line interface, yet with hi res graphics and with the advent of easy, eye candy UI have got used to just dumping files on my desktop. After some time the desktop fills up and eventually i get round to filing them somewhere.

What's nice about the desktop is that you can group related files together by placing them next to each other, and if you have two groups of related files you can have two clumps of files next to each other. It's really obvious and you get a finely nuanced 'piling system' with no learning curve.

What would be really really cool would be for the files app, which is really a GUI version of 'ls' to have an option of a desktop mode. So you have the list files option, with details, and sort by name, date/time etc as is present now. And instead of a rectangular grid of icons you get to place files into little groups, just as on the desktop. This gets round the problem of too many directories, too many files, can't find anything, and it's really simple for a naive user to drive, and you still have the option of the tabular list.

If you want to be flash, you could allow other objects to be added (eg text and images).

The icon space could be bigger than the window of course.

I'm thinking that it might be easy to use the desktop layout code in the files window, or another option could be to have the desktop just show files for the current directory, in other words allow the desktop to cd to somewhere other than ~/Desktop. That would I think be very easy to implement, just add an icon to the task bar (and maybe one more to revert to default)

Obviously a diff current directory for each workspace.

If implementing the desktop/cd variant, you would need the files window to allow searching by date or alphabetically for example for the current directory by default.

I hope you like this idea!

[JoeFootball]

I'm currently using 20.1 Cinammon, downloaded the Beta and haven't seen any option yet to upgrade to the LTS release (unless it just happened)

If you're applying all the updates, you have the latest version LM 20.1, regardless of if it began as a Beta release.

[after_ait]

I noticed there was an update to cinammon and looked at the file manager, and found the arrange items manually option in the view menu.

Having tried this using a directory somewhere and sometime later rebooted I found that my desktop icons had got scrambled.

I had expected maybe a hidden file (eg '.icon.layout') in the directory but no...

(Not sure if this is all new stuff or if i've only just noticed the option.)

[Moonstone Man]

(Not sure if this is all new stuff or if i've only just noticed the option.)

You've only just noticed it.

[Burning Desires 69]

What I do for myself Currently? Don't know if it helps anyone else.

I Temporarily create a Clutter Folder on my Desktop. All Un-Wanted Files go there.
I later move those Files to a Desktop Location I created in an External Drive that isn't Connected to my Windows C Drive.
Or in this case where Linux places them.

This helps keep my Desktop & my Wallpapers clutter clean for Maximum Viewing.

It is not Perfect, my ICON's do take a bit to Find in my External Drive,
but it does work in the sense that my Desktop is Clutter Free, & I can always find them from Start Menu.

So it's not Perfect, but it does work, & it has been working for me for a bit now.
It would be kinda nice if we could have a setting that allows us to not only Toggle this,
but also make this set to Auto Usage. Most importantly I think it should be an Option, that can be Disabled if we don't want or like it.
I also think we should be able to choose where it's Automatically Sent Upon Installed. No?