Files (Nautilus) v3.28 will lose the desktop icons capability

[ben-8409]

Reasoning is that it removes lots of deprecated code and prevents future enhancements to Files (Nautilus).

csorianognome.wordpress.com

Nautilus desktop plans

Hello all, We have been discussing our plans with the desktop part of Nautilus for quite a bit of time and in this blog post I’ll explain them. Context Nautilus had have a feature called R…

The reasons presented a good and valid i think. However, removing the functionality before a replacement is ready is very gnomey decision that I consider harmful. The Desktop metaphor works since decades and many users rely on it in the every day work and organizing their work. I use it as a sort of ToDo list, for example to quickly paste some pictures from my camera before properly sorting them… similar to how I use my real desk.

I hope Ubuntu Bionic Beaver will have a replacement ready before removing the functionality.
Edit: Sorry, I missed this reply:

And here we go, we keep Nautilus 3.26 this cycle and will help on the extension once the LTS is mostly around. If you want to see this part of the meeting logs:

https://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2018/01/09/%23ubuntu-desktop.html#t14:46

Very good decision!

[mohan-ram]

Looks like it is being moved from Files (Nautilus) handling it to GNOME-Shell.

[jyaku]

Not in the 3.28 timeframe. Perhaps in the future if someone steps up to finish the extension

[mohan-ram]

Maybe once we do update to latest nautilus and start using the extension for desktop icons, we can get away from having desktop icon increase in size when we make folders and files larger in nautilus. Good write up @didrocks. Thanks.

[neclimdul]

First, awesome write ups, solid decision. I’ve got a little bit of a different question I think.

I’ve been a gnome shell user for a long time and prefer that experience but with the merging of Ubuntu Gnome into Ubuntu I’ve know that’s secondary to Canonical’s direction. Again not faulting, your making the right decision for your product.

Getting to the point, I’m not sure what features nautilus 3.28 might have but will there be a way to get a clean latest gnome experience or will we just need to wait till fall?

[stephen-d-allen]

If I understand you correctly - I think you’re looking for the ‘vanilla-gnome-session’.

I to have been using gnome-shell for some time, (since it’s second iteration). Didn’t like it at first, (actually hated is the better word) but after a month of daily use, I found that I couldn’t go back to a conventional desktop. So I really do appreciate the Gnome-Devs and their HIGs. They do know what they’re doing and it seems they backup at least some of their design decisions by analysing user data. But … I’m digressing.

Cheers. HTH

[neclimdul]

I’m running a “vanilla” experience on artful so I get that. Let me ask a different way. Will there be a official PPA or some other method for running nautilus 3.28 without the changes to other systems that @didrocks mentioned needing to support using 3.26? Something like how the Kubuntu team provides access to the latest KDE releases maybe though obviously at a smaller scale.

This isn’t a big deal just trying to understand and set my expectations. Thanks!

[merlijn-sebrechts]

Probably no official method, there might be a community PPA though, as didrocks pointed out in the blogpost.

[queennikki1972]

A work around… Use a different file manager, confirmed on Ubuntu 18.04 https://sites.google.com/site/installationubuntu/tweaking-ubuntu/change-default-filemanager

[fossfreedom]

@didrocks - has the desktop team discussed its nautilus plans for 18.10? Is Nautilus 3.30 still on the plans for 18.10?

If it is - any chance of uploading at least nautilus 3.28 very soon into cosmic whilst nautilus 3.30 is being polished for its September release?

[didrocks]

We didn’t discuss about it yet as we discuss new version and upgrades later in the cycle, you can follow our weekly meeting on IRC, on #ubuntu-desktop (freenode) 13:30 UTC on Tuesday.

[stephen-d-allen]

any chance of uploading at least nautilus 3.28 very soon into cosmic whilst nautilus 3.30 is being polished

I’m looking for newer Nautilus too . No pressure though.

[fossfreedom]

ah - sad to say no discussion about this at the recent desktop meeting

cross-fingers for the next meeting…

[didrocks]

feel free to join and ask it in the AOB

[fossfreedom]

@didrocks & @jbicha For 19.04 Ubuntu Budgie believes it has a viable alternative for desktop icons support.

We are working with an upstream project https://github.com/spheras/desktopfolder to further enhance the existing upstream capability.

I have a pending debian mentors request for the package here - https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=913363 … hoping to find a someone to work through the sponsorship process.

We also have a PPA testing this out with Nautilus 3.30. https://launchpad.net/~ubuntubudgie-dev/+archive/ubuntu/desktop-icons - git master release of desktopfolder rather than the published stable release.

As an aside - DesktopFolder also works on GNOME-Shell so this gives an alternative for X11 (not fully wayland compatible) users from using the gnome-shell-extension in development.

So - assuming we can get DesktopFolder into Debian --> Ubuntu repos, Ubuntu Budgie would warmly support moving to Nautilus 3.32.

[ads20000]

Why are we not using the Files’ maintainer’s extension instead of this one? Would be good to hear the reasoning

[fossfreedom]

gnome-shell extensions can only be used on gnome-shell. It is that simple

[uwu]

it’s not ready yet to meet the nautilus’ functions completely

[khurshid-alam]

Not just desktop, people will lose this too.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/issues/448

For Unity-7, I updated the patches for Nautilus and testing Nemo-Desktop (only the desktop portion). It actually works well. It has accounts-service integration and can be made to play well with Gnome.