The GNOME sessions are not default Ubuntu sessions.
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Are you sure? I just installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu 19.04 daily build and I have desktop icons. I don’t have proposed repo enabled. Did you do a fresh install with blank Home directory (without and config files from previous
install)?
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The current image as of 01-04 uses nautilus 1:3.26.4-0ubuntu9 which supports the desktop inc. icons, ect.
Default is to show trash.
The 3.30.x in proposed doesn’t support the desktop at all.
The desktop-icons gs ext. does to some extent, Default is to show trash & home. It does not (and likely won’t?) support exec on binaries or any type of .desktop files… (- which would render examples.desktop moot…
Of course, I am. No proposed repo enabled.
As you see, the Trash icon is not there.
You don’t see the Ubuntu Dock or the top panel in the screeny, as I have D2P extension installed, btw.
Got tired of this problem with Nautilus, so looked for a way to uninstall it. Interestingly, even after uninstalling Nautilus, the desktop was still running by it. No desktop icons as before.
Don’t like Gdm3, never did, so installed Lightdm and Slick greeter. Still running Ubuntu, not gnome-session, as seen below…Ubuntu Wayland runs too.
Needed a flle manager, so installed Nemo 4.0.6 and set it to run the desktop.
Thanks to @mc3man, @YamiYukiSenpai, @manbutu for the Nemo install ideas, and the guy, who created Nemo.
Let’s see how it works out as 19.04 grows. Right now, I am not worrying about “take-away-all-user-options” madness or whether Ubuntu would find a way out of it. Going to keep this install until the first release day of 19.10 development daily.
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Nothing has particularly changed . That little black menu on r. click is simply just some shortcuts to Settings, nothing to do with nautilus. It’s what anyone would see if handling the Desktop is disabled (i.e, no desktop icons.
So at the start of this thread you somehow disabled the Desktop, nothing more…, not the current default as of today’s image.
In Ubuntu 18.04 with the old nautilus 3.26 you can easily remove the icons with gnome tweaks
Started afresh - post 8
Whatever happenned, it is nice it happenned, which allowed me to uninstall Nautilus. Anyway, Nemo is there now without any other “default” file manager around. Simply installed Nemo from Tessa repo to get 4.0.6.
Desktop is working, for everything is working. It is Ubuntu without Ubuntu dock and the other extension. I manually deleted them – not uninstalled – and blocked them from getting reinstalled. And, without Nautilus. My installation now is an interesting subject to keep an eye on, to see what happens with the upgrades. I don’t expect much change in the Ubuntu base, though.
Yes, its nice to be able to use a mixture of good apps from different distros/DEs, without being stuck to a “DE” and not having to keep the “default” apps on the side, even if you don’t want to use them. I had that freedom only with Openbox, but somehow, it appears that it can be achieved with default Ubuntu. I really like this situation.
The idea is to get as much as possible options than losing any.
I would really strongly recommend switching to Kubuntu if you want to maximize user options. GNOME is not aiming to do this (it’s aiming to be more minimalistic) and so, yes, the Ubuntu (GNOME) session could lose ‘user options’ in the future. You can continue to workaround it if you wish (Ubuntu will work around some of the defaults - AppIndicator support, Dash to Dock (with less options), desktop icons option, Yaru) and argue for the defaults to be changed but you’ll likely be rebuffed. I thought in Ubuntu 18.10, though, that there is desktop icons by default? So a fresh installation of Ubuntu Disco not having desktop icons is a bug. In fact, the bug should be reported against Files (ubuntu bug nautilus) because Files is still version 3.26.4 on Ubuntu Disco.
Thank you!
D2D would always have more options, and D2P even more. Have look at the 3rd pic in in #14. It is D2P. All extensions are freely available here, so anyone can install any of them – no argument, just play!
Should be done, if someone wants to use the “new/er” Nautilus, I don’t. Anyway, Nautilus 3.26.4 won’t be there too long.
Now, the defaults are Nemo 4.0.6, Geany, Tilix, Slick Greeter and few others. It is still Ubuntu (and Ubuntu on Wayland) as you’d notice in pic 2 in post 14. Of course, someone can “argue” that it is not (no Ubuntu dock, no top panel), but I’m OK with it.
I just want to see how long my install would hold on with the upgrades. Survived 3 of them.
No-Nautilus ubuntu-session is doing pretty well for last 6 days, and also with no-default theme and icons. Survived all daily updates.
Neatly arranged apps to categories
My question is: how do I get rid of the desktop icons in 19.04? Manually setting
show-desktop-icons = false
in dconf doesn’t work, it’s ignored. Probably the override is stronger. What can I do?
Just disable the extension in gnome-tweaks should be the easiest solution. Or remove the extension, but better just diable it.
There is no extension. Or better: the “desktop icons” extension is to show the desktop icons, as by default they are hidden in GNOME. Nothing useful there to hide the icons.
Unfortunately it is unsafe to remove gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons because:
$ sudo apt remove gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons ubuntu-desktop ubuntu-desktop-minimal
So don’t try that.
But this works:
Gnome Tweaks > Extensions > Desktop Icons 
> Show … in the desktop = OFF
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Well that can also be done in dconf-editor which is a better place for this particular activity. People using Gnome Tweaks > Extensions > Desktop Icons … may happen to click on the extension itself which leads to an offer to install the extension. Installing a 2nd version leads to poor behavior…
Thanks, but it does not really work as even after turning off the two “show … in the desktop”, the files in ~/Desktop are still shown. Only the trash and link to the home directory can be disabled.
You could keep ~/Desktop empty, yes, but it’s not a real solution and sometimes programs put files in there. I’d like to have a switch to turn off all the desktop icons.
The issue about being unable to disable default Ubuntu extensions is handled by this proposal:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/merge_requests/1
Maybe it can be reviewed and accepted for GNOME 3.34.
Otherwise, our official answer is that you can install gnome-session, reboot, and then click one of the GNOME options from the gear button as you log in. That will give you a vanilla GNOME session and you can then enable the extensions you want. I understand that’s not ideal either for many users who like most of the Ubuntu customizations.
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